Thrust 1: Nanophotonic modulators for optical interconnects

High Speed AttoJoule/Bit Passive and Active Nanophotonic Devices for Computing and Optical Interconnects

AFOSR MURI (2016.12~2021.11): High Speed AttoJoule/Bit Passive and Active Nanophotonic Devices for Computing and Optical Interconnects

Research team: Univ. Texas at Austin, Univ. Virginia, Univ. Delaware, Central Florida Univ., and Oregon State Univ.

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Even if the continuation of Moore's law meets a bottleneck, the increasing trend of network connections and bandwidth consumed is accelerating with no foreseeable sign of halting because of the bandwidth- Even if the continuation of Moore's law meets a bottleneck, the increasing trend of network connections and bandwidth consumed is accelerating with no foreseeable sign of halting because of the bandwidth-hungry applications. The total amount of content passing through the world’s networks is expected to increase to 35 Zettabytes（10^21）with unprecedented power consumption by 2020, meaning that by the end of this decade, with current technologies, service providers will need an astonishing over 20 times of power consumption they have in 2015.

Optoelectronic interconnects and optical logic gates provide key solutions to drastically reduce the power to modulate (e-to-o conversion), processing, Even if the continuation of Moore's law meets a bottleneck, the increasing trend of network connections and bandwidth consumed is accelerating with no foreseeable sign of halting because of the bandwidth-hungry applications. The total amount of content passing through the world’s networks is expected to increase to 35 Zettabytes（10^21）with unprecedented power consumption by 2020, meaning that by the end of this decade, with current technologies, service providers will need an astonishing over 20 times of power consumption they have in 2015.

Optoelectronic interconnects and optical logic gates provide key solutions to drastically reduce the power to modulate (e-to-o conversion), processing, transport, and demodulate (o-to-e) high speed signals with power consumption down to attojoule/bit (AJ/B) level. In this program, we propose a myriad of ultra-low power nanooptoelectronic devices for intra- and inter-chip optical interconnects and computing. Power saving and performance enhancement will be achieved with one- to two-orders of magnitude better than existing electronic counterparts.

The main research scope at OSU is the development of ultra-compact plasmonic modulators with the research goal of sub-femto-joule/bit energy efficiency. More research news will be released in the near future.

Related publications

Surface-Normal Plasmonic Modulator

NSF BRIGE (2013.9~2016.9): Surface-Normal Plasmonic Modulator for Three-Dimensional Board-to-Board and Chip-to-Chip Optical Interconnects

In this three year project, we explored a new type of surface-normal electro-optic modulator using metallic grating with E-O polymer materials. The outcome of this project includes both fundamental study of the plasmonic nanostructure and the fabrication and characterization of the E-O modulator. 

First, we discovered slow-light effect of subwavelength diffraction gratings via the Rayleigh anomaly using a fully analytical approach without needing to consider specific grating structures. Second, we investigated the enhanced optical nonlinearity enabled by localized plasmonic fields from the metallic nanostructure. Third, we investigated the fabrication processes to integrate E-O polymer with plasmonic nanostructures. Specially, we monitored the leakage current during the poling process, which proves to be very efficient in reducing the failure rate. Last but not the least we conducted the research for the theoretical design, fabrication, and optical characterization of a free-space surface-normal optical modulator using plasmonic grating integrated E-O polymer.

Related Publications include:

  • Ren, F., X. Wang, and A.X. Wang, Thermo-optic modulation of plasmonic bandgap on metallic photonic crystal slab. Applied Physics Letters, 2013. 102(18): p. 181101.
  • Ren, F., et al., Effect of finite metallic grating size on Rayleigh anomaly-surface plasmon polariton resonances. Optics Express, 2015. 23(22): p. 28868-28873.
  • Ren, F., et al., Enhanced third harmonic generation by organic materials on high-Q plasmonic photonic crystals. Optics Express, 2014. 22(17): p. 20292-20297.
  • Ren, F., et al., Surface-normal plasmonic modulator using sub-wavelength metal grating on electro-optic polymer thin film. Optics Communications, 2015. 352: p. 116-120.
  • Kim, K.-Y., et al., Slow-light effect via Rayleigh anomaly and the effect of finite gratings. Optics letters, 2015. 40(22): p. 5339-5342.
  • Gao, Q., F. Ren, and A.X. Wang, Direct and Efficient Optical Coupling Into Plasmonic Integrated Circuits From Optical Fibers. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 2016. 28(11): p. 1165-1168.
  • Gao, Q., S. Liverman, and A.X. Wang, Design and Characterization of High Efficiency Nanoantenna Couplers with Plasmonic Integrated Circuit. IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2017.