Giulia Piccolo, Balaji Rangarajan, Vidhu Puliyankot
Silicon is the most used material for microchips. For optoelectronics, e.g. used for telecommunication, silicon is not an obvious starting material however. It cannot generate the light that is typical for telecom, nor can it detect the same.
The aim of this project is to make bright silicon-based light emitters, by pushing the fundamental limits as far as possible or by finding a clever work-around. We are developing models to describe and extrapolate our findings, beside manufacturing and testing prototypes. Further, we aim to make waveguides and photodetectors on the same silicon wafer, to create complete optoelectronic building blocks. All this should be realized with a CMOS-friendly manufacturing approach, so it would be easily incorporated in existing fabrication lines. This project builds further on the HELIOS project.
