Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

Electronic and photonic technologies have become part of our daily life. They are the ubiquitous backbone of a multitude of applications, from smartphones and computers to medical instrumentation and telecommunication systems. Integrating electronics and photonics on a single platform, known as integrated optoelectronics, holds great promise not only to enable a greater degree of device miniaturization, higher speed, and better performance but also for emerging applications in quantum and nanotechnologies.

Although silicon and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology have dominated electronics for more than four decades and research on silicon photonics has progressed significantly, a variety of other semiconductor materials are used in photonics to expand the wavelength range of silicon’s operation mainly for optical communication systems operating at 1320 and 1550 nanometer wavelengths. Finding CMOS-compatible materials that extend silicon’s optical operation wavelengths that enable new functionalities and leap across the classical domain to quantum regime has therefore become a task of technological need and industrial importance. Graphene, an atomically-thick carbon layer, with exceptional electronic and optical properties proves not only to enhance the performance of silicon devices but is also compatible with CMOS technology.

Through the proposed program, we aim to develop two classes of new integrated optoelectronic platforms that will combine silicon photonic crystal structures with graphene for classical applications and their combination with superconducting Niobium Nitride (NbN) for quantum applications. The proposal will address the device physics, engineering design, fabrication, and characterization of such hybrid structures. The existing fabrication facilities at Quantum NanoFab in Waterloo and well-established characterization infrastructure in Majedi’s group will be used fully to ensure success of this program. The major outcome of this proposal is to develop optoelectronic devices, mainly optical modulators, switches and detectors, that are beyond silicon photonic’s optical operation wavelengths, with better performance metrics in comparison with competing technologies. The developed devices and circuits greatly impact areas of application ranging from optical interconnects and computing processors to biomedical sensors. The hybrid graphene/superconducting devices on silicon photonic crystals is introduced as a new quantum photonic platform integrating single photon devices where photons are individually processed and detected on a single chip, a technological challenge that has not yet been achieved.

The wealth of multidisciplinary research, breadth of expertise, and technical capabilities to which HQP will be exposed to; attract talented students and provide a unique environment for innovation.