14^th Webinar of Applied Sciences

Nanophotonics in the Third Millennium

Photonics in the 3d Millenium will play the role, electronics has played in the 20th century. No electronics means no computers, TV, hearing aids, MRT, household aids,…No photonics means no fast interconnects in mega-data centers, intercontinental data links, laser welding, optical lithography, LIDAR, face recognition in mobile phones or inside cars,…The number of applications, systems which are based on photonic components, as well as the number of their users is exploding. As of today such systems are commercially at least as important as purely electronic based systems.

Alongside with this explosion of use goes an explosion of energy consumption by the systems. Published analysis shows, that e.g. presently 8-10% of the US electricity production is consumed by the users of the internet. The consumption rapidly increases year by year on a world-wide level. Most of this electricity is not produced in a sustainable way, but contributes to the increase of CO2 level in the atmosphere. Structures of reduced dimensionality, like quantum wells or quantum dots, show significant reduction of energy consumption as compared to photonic devices based on three-dimensional structures. Brake-throughs in more energy-efficient photonic device technologies have been additionally reported recently, such that we are now rapidly embarking towards “green photonics” technologies. World-wide work on “Green Photonics and Electronics” until 2017 has been reviewed in the book by G. Eisenstein and D. Bimberg.

This webinar will report in its 3 presentations about recent important developments towards “green photonics”. The first presentation will report brake-throughs in heat management of the active are of QW-based surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) grown by MOCVD based on a novel laser design, for short range interconnects in data centers, or for sensing applications, like face recognition, leading to much increased output power.

The second presentation reports on the results of an international team of scientists from Russia, Germany, and China developing QW-based VCSELs for longer wavelengths, the O- and C-bands, for longer distance data com. These devices are based on active areas and mirrors grown separately by MBE and merged by double wafer fusion showing record output power, data rate and energy consumption per bit.

The third presentation will focus on edge emitting devices, like lasers or semiconductor optical amplifiers based on quantum dotsand is given by one of its pioneers. QD-based lasers are holding the world record for minimum threshold current density, or Tbit/s data rates enabled by a single passively mode-locked lasers using higher order modulation schemes.

Date: 24 February 2024

Time: 10:00 am CET | 05:00 pm CST Asia

Webinar ID: 841 5118 72201

Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com