News
PLX Technology Joined the Consortium
We welcome PLX Technology, a new full member of the UK Silicon Photonics Consortium. The company is the technology and market share leader in PCI Express switches, bridges and 10GBase-T PHY solutions, with additional leadership in consumer storage controllers as well as general purpose USB controllers. The corporate office is in Sunnyvale, CA USA with additional technical offices located in the UK, North America, Far East and Europe. Within the UKSP consortium, PLX will closely work with all partners on project demonstrators.
Next Group IV Photonics Conference in London
The 8th International Conference on Group IV Photonics conference will take place at the Royal Society in London from 14 to 16 September 2011. This year, the Royal Society has celebrated the 350th anniversary and and it is the oldest scientific academy in the world. The conference will take place at a fantastic venue in central London which houses Newton original manuscripts amongst other things. Deadline for the submission of papers is 9 May 2011, whilst the pre-registration deadline is 12 August 2011. The conference chairs are Prof. Graham T. Reed from the University of Surrey, UK and Dr Jean-Marc Fedelli from CEA-Leti, France.
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Silicon Photonics Summer School: 3-8 July 2011, St Andrews, UK
The Silicon Photonics summer school is co-organised by two major research consortia, UK Silicon Photonics (UKSP) and HELIOS. Furthermore, the event is co-located with the Summer School of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in Photonics (EMMP), which ensures the attendance of a large number of excellent external speakers. The UKSP/HELIOS Silicon Photonics Summer School is aimed at Masters and PhD-level students. The speakers will provide an accessible introduction to their respective fields as well as presenting their latest research results. More information on: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/microphotonics/spschool/index.php
Photonics West 2011
Several members of the group attended Photonics West conference in January (22-27 January 2011, San Francisco, USA). Gerald Buller, David Thomson and Goran Mashanovich gave invited talks on applications of Si SPADs, optical modulators, mid-infrared waveguides in silicon, respectively. A. P. Kinghts talked about defect mediated detection of wavelengths around 1550nm in a ring resonant structure. Zoran Ikonic talked about SiGe metallized stub and plasmonic gap mode electro-absorption modulators. Fred Gardes presented recent results on optical modulators in the frame of UK Si Photonics project, Youfang Hu talked about two solutions for a silicon photonics filter, and finally Renzo Loiacono presented his results on ion implanted Bragg gratings in Silicon.
New Grant (SPADs) Awarded by EPSRC
The EPSRC has awarded a grant valued at £1.43m to a consortium led by Heriot-Watt University, to investigate single photon avalanche detectors (SPADs) in group IV materials. The consortium, led by Professor Gerald Buller from Heriot Watt, includes researchers from Leeds University (led by Dr Robert Kelsall), Warwick University (led by Dr David Leadley), and University of Surrey (led by Prof. Graham Reed). In this 3 year project the consortium will establish a new class of germanium/silicon single photon avalanche detectors that will operate efficiently in the near-infrared, particularly at the strategically important telecommunications wavebands, and combine the advantages of low-noise Si single-photon avalanche multiplication with the infra-red sensing capability of Ge.
European Silicon Photonics Cluster
A £5 Million UK Silicon Photonics programme led by Surrey is now a part of a cluster of European silicon photonics R&D projects (www.siliconphotonics.eu). The projects are funded by European and national funding mechanisms. The European silicon photonics projects collaborate on dissemination and training activities, and on knowledge and technology transfer from R&D to industry.
Review Paper Published in Nature Photonics (AUG 2010)
The August issue of Nature Photonics had a special focus on Silicon Photonics. Graham Reed, Goran Mashanovich, Frederic Gardes and David Thomson, authored a review article on optical modulators in silicon. Optical modulator is a crucial device for future electronic/photonics integrated circuits. Unfortunately, silicon does not exhibit a linear electro-optical effect (the Pockels effect) due to its centrosymmetric crystal structure, thus making optical modulators in silicon difficult to realise. However, due to the extensive research effort of several groups in the world, including the Silicon Photonics Group at Surrey, optical modulators in silicon have been improved dramatically in recent years, with a notable increase in bandwidth from the megahertz to the multigigahertz regime in just over half a decade. Our paper in Nature Photonics discusses the techniques that have been (and will continue to be) used to implement silicon optical modulators, and also provides an outlook for the future.
Heriot-Watt and McMaster Join the Consortium
The consortium welcome Photon Counting Group from Heriot-Watt University (led by Prof. Gerald Buller) and Silicon Photonics group from McMaster University (led by Dr Andrew Knights) who joined the UK Silicon Photonics programme as Associate Members. Within the UKSP programme, Prof. Buller will lead the work on single photon detectors in SiGe and Dr Knights will lead the work on defect engineered detectors in silicon.
19 GHz Compact Optical Modulator in Silicon Demonstrated
Frederic Y. Gardes from the University of Surrey and his colleagues from the UK and EU have recently demonstrated high speed modulation based on a compact silicon ring resonator operating in depletion mode. The modulation is based on the carrier depletion effect in an asymmetric pn diode structure. The device exhibits a DC on/off ratio of 5 dB at -10 V, and a 3 dB bandwidth of 19 GHz. Despite the relatively high bandwidth result, even better performance is expected with further device optimisation.
Dr Dominic Gallagher Presented Recent Advances of Photonics CAD Softwares
Dr Dominic Gallagher from Photon Design in Oxford visited ATI, University of Surrey on 17 Jul 2009. He gave a presentation about recent advances in Photonics CAD softwares. His talk was mainly focused on a highly efficent and powerful software package, FIMMWAVE/FIMMPROP, which is based on Eigenmode Expansion Method (EME). He also introduced two popular softwares: OMNISIM, which is based on FDTD engine, and PICWAVE, a tool for the design of Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC). The PPT files of the talk are available for download:
St Andrews Reported Green Light Emission from Silicon by Third-Harmonic-Generation
One of the partners of the Si-Photonics consortium has recently demonstrated experimentally dramatically enhanced nonlinear effects in Si-based slow-light photonic crystal waveguides. In particular, the team of Professor Thomas Krauss from the University of St Andrews' School of Physics & Astronomy has experimentally observed visible (green) third-harmonic-generation (THG) at a wavelength of 520 nm using only a few watts of peak power - a remarkable result given that silicon normally strongly absorbs (instead of emitting) green light! The effect was enabled by the substantial reduction (by up to a factor of 40) of the group velocity of a guided near-infrared pump signal, which led directly to a corresponding spatial compression (concentration) of the guided field - a feat that significantly reduced the peak pump power required to observe THG. This research demonstrates yet another unexpected nonlinear function that can be realized in a CMOS-compatible silicon waveguide! Green light emission from silicon!
