Heterogeneous integration for highly functional silicon photonic circuits

Silicon photonics has emerged as the most promising material platform for future photonic integrated systems. Thanks to its CMOS compatibility, it will enable the development of chips over very large volumes and with unprecedented level of complexity and functionality. However, the indirect bandgap and the cubic symmetry of the silicon crystal lead to very poor light emission, lack of Pockels effect and inefficient non-linear processes at telecom wavelengths.
This project will address these limitations through the development of heterogeneous technologies that will integrate III-V semiconductors, garnets and complex oxides on silicon photonic chips. Final demonstrators will include devices with integrated lasers and detectors, very low-energy optical modulators, more efficient optical non linearities and on-chip polarisation manipulation capabilities.
This research project is to be carried out in the Optoelectronics research group under the supervision of Prof. Marc Sorel who has been engaged in research concerning photonic integration and silicon photonics for over 15 years.