The aim of POSEIDON is to develop a radically new bottom-up approach towards multi-scale, on chip self-assembly of active colloids based on low-cost colloidal technology. For the first time this encompasses the entire process chain of computer-aided design, controlled synthesis, hierarchical assembly, optoelectronic integration and device fabrication. By controlling and designing self-assembly processes directly on a device, addressing length scales from nm to 100’s of μm simultaneously, the vision of POSEIDON is to allow the fabrication of functional nanophotonic components with 3D, single-nm resolution integrated into complex photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The final goal of POSEIDON is to develop electrically pumped light sources which can be monolithically integrated into the back-end-of-line of CMOS chips. So far, the key bottleneck that is holding back integrated photonic applications is the lack of a monolithically integrable, mass-manufacturable light source as Si does not emit light efficiently. Despite impressive recent progress, the top-down approaches of heterogeneous integration of III-V light sources are costly, have low integration density and low throughput, creating massive cost and complexity barriers for the commercialization of Si photonics. Packaging costs including fibers for external light sources currently constitute around 80% of the total cost of Si photonic PICs and are hence a showstopper. The breakthrough targeted by POSEIDON overcomes these limitations. The developed technology will enable further applications from optical computing, to quantum optics for ultra-secure communications, to personalized health monitoring devices able to detect molecules at ultralow concentrations.
The aim of POSEIDON is to develop a radically new approach towards multi-length-scale, on-chip assembly of active colloids for the creation of optically and electrically pumped on-chip light sources. During the project the structures under investigation have been narrowed down, favoring nanoparticle on mirror (NPoM) and disk-on-disk (DoD) resonators over zero refractive index metamaterials (ZIM).
