Silicon integrated lasers and optical amplifiers

Objective

"This project is a six year programme of work to develop fully integrated optical emitters, lasers and optical amplifiers in silicon. Recent years have seen tremendous advances in the development of silicon photonic devices. However, the last hurdle to full silicon photonic systems and optical data transfer on and between integrated circuits are electrically pumped optical amplifiers and lasers in silicon using a CMOS compatible technology. Consequently, there have been massive efforts worldwide to search for efficient light emission from silicon. Our team made a major initial breakthrough producing the first LED in bulk silicon - published in NATURE (1997). Although a world first, this device only operated efficiently at low temperatures. This problem was solved using a new nanotechnology - dislocation engineering - reported in NATURE (2001) - and crucially uses only conventional CMOS technology. The development of this into a silicon injection laser and optical amplifiers is the essential next step for high technology high value applications. We have recently made a further breakthrough by obtaining extraordinary optical gain in erbium doped silicon that now offers a realistic route to this goal. Currently the incorporation of lasers and amplifiers on silicon platforms can only be achieved hybridizations of active devices based on III-V materials ""pasted"" on to silicon waveguides and cavities. Gain has been reported using four-wave-mixing and Intel has recently demonstrated a Raman laser in silicon but both rely on purely optical-to-optical transitions and are fundamentally unable to be electrically pumped. We believe we have the only route that has the potential to produce electrically pumped amplifiers and lasers with room and higher temperature operation and that is capable of genuinely being fully integrated into silicon using standard silicon process technology."

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technology nanotechnology
• natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry metalloids
• natural sciences physical sciences optics laser physics

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

• CMOS technology
• dislocation engineering
• erbium
• laser
• light emitting diodes
• luminescence
• optical amplifier
• photonics
• room temperature
• silicon

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• ERC-AG-PE7 - ERC Advanced Grant - Systems and communication engineering

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2008-AdG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-AG - ERC Advanced Grant

Host institution

Beneficiaries (1)