After Oxygen, Silicon is the second most common material in the crust of the earth. Silicon possesses such outstanding semiconductor characteristics that it has become the cornerstone of modern electronics. And has recently begun to become popular in photonics circles. It has turned out that silicon also possesses some well-hidden, but much coveted optical characteristics which can be used to control light.
At DTU, the Department of Photonics Engineering, it has been discovered that pure silicon is able to not only control light, but to do it in such a short time scale, that it makes it possible to optically handle terabit per second optical signals. This effect is achieved when nano-technology is combined with silicon waveguide production. DTU Fotonik has the world’s leading laboratory within optical communication and the discovery of the terabit potential in silicon has opened up undreamt of possibilities in this area of science. With pure silicon it is now possible to get on with the development of the renowned optical chip. And this will be an optical chip with terabit per second capabilities.
Kick started by this ground breaking discovery, our project will focus on building a deeper understanding of the phenomena and on utilizing that understanding to optimize the silicon waveguides in order to become able to design a chip set which may be able to perform several complicated optical functions at terabit/s speeds.
Project title: Nano-Engineered Silicon for Terabit per second Optical pRocessing (NESTOR)
Grantee: Oxenløwe, Leif Katsuo
Institution: Technical University of Denmark Granted amount: DKK 5.758.373
Grantor: Det Frie Forskningsråd