Ultra-Low Power Integrated Microlasers for Optical Interconnect Technologies

用于光互连技术的超低功率集成微型激光器

• 批准号: 327680-2013
• 负责人: Schriemer, Henry
• 金额: $ 2.11万
• 依托单位: University of Ottawa
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=595284
• 关键词: Ultra; Low; Power; Integrated; Microlasers

Consumer demand for novel information and communications technologies with increasingly sophisticated applications continues to drive the semiconductor industry to achieve ever smaller and faster devices. New ways of sustaining this growth in technology are being sought, and promising approaches are nearing commercial realization. This growth increasingly requires moving immense quantities of information extremely rapidly - between users across vast distances, within devices from the core to peripherals, at the component level from chip to chip, or even on the chip. About 2.5% of our global energy consumption is now dedicated to this task, and this fraction is growing rapidly. The problems of heat and power consumption can no longer be solved at the purely electronic level. Over long distances, we now rely on optical solutions. This proposal brings the optical solution down to the chip level. With my team of graduate students and colleagues, I will design and build a fundamentally new kind of ultra-small laser for eventual seamless integration with the electronic architecture of current and future generations of computer chips. We will use engineered materials called nanowires as the optically active part (the "gain") of our microlaser. This is the part with the potential for electronic integration. We will achieve very low power lasing by encasing the nanowires in a material called a photonic crystal (the "cavity"). This is an engineered material that manipulates and controls the laser system's optical response by either forbidding or allowing light to move in certain ways. The laser is extremely small because photonic crystals work at sizes of only a few optical wavelengths, the fundamental limit to tailoring the flow of light. By independently engineering the materials that realize optical gain and cavity response, we have bypassed a fundamental manufacturing constraint of contemporary approaches to solid state microlasing. We will focus on realizing lasing in photonic crystal architectures, and then work toward achieving electronic integration. Because this integration will be solely through the nanowires, we anticipate that it will be far faster and have much lower power requirements than contemporary approaches.

消费者对新型信息和通信技术以及日益复杂的应用的需求继续推动半导体行业实现更小、更快的设备。人们正在寻找维持技术增长的新方法，并且有前景的方法即将实现商业化。这种增长越来越需要极其快速地传输大量信息——在远距离的用户之间、在设备内从核心到外围设备、在组件级别从芯片到芯片、甚至在芯片上。目前，全球能源消耗的约 2.5% 用于这项任务，并且这一比例正在迅速增长。热量和功耗问题不再能够在纯电子层面得到解决。对于长距离，我们现在依赖光学解决方案。该提案将光学解决方案降低到芯片级别。我将与我的研究生和同事团队一起设计和构建一种全新的超小型激光器，以最终与当前和未来几代计算机芯片的电子架构无缝集成。我们将使用称为纳米线的工程材料作为微型激光器的光学活性部分（“增益”）。这是具有电子集成潜力的部分。我们将通过将纳米线封装在称为光子晶体（“腔”）的材料中来实现非常低功率的激光发射。这是一种工程材料，可以通过禁止或允许光以某些方式移动来操纵和控制激光系统的光学响应。激光器非常小，因为光子晶体的工作尺寸只有几个光学波长，这是调整光流的基本限制。通过独立设计实现光学增益和腔响应的材料，我们绕过了当代固态微激光方法的基本制造限制。我们将专注于在光子晶体结构中实现激光，然后努力实现电子集成。由于这种集成将仅通过纳米线进行，因此我们预计它将比当代方法更快，并且功耗要求低得多。