Latest Past Events

Silicon Photonics Technology: Progress and Application

Abstract: Silicon photonics was truly recognized as a disruptive technology right at the beginning of this millennium (21st century). In course of time, it has found wide-spread applications in the area of high-speed optical interconnects technology, microwave photonics, lab-on-chip sensing, and quantum information processing solutions. The triumph of silicon photonics technology has been possible because of the advancement of silicon CMOS technology nodes along with a little add-on, for the co-integration of electronics and photonics devices. Besides hybrid integrations of III-V laser sources/detectors, waveguide-based devices like directional coupler, microring resonator and Mach-Zehnder interferometer are commonly used to achieve almost all other passive and active functions. In this lecture, I’ll discuss first about how the electrical interconnect bottleneck in IC technology compelled semiconductor industries to re-invent integrated optics or photonics integrated circuit technology during the last two decades of the last millennium. This will be then followed by an overview on latest state-of-the-art integrated silicon photonics technology leading towards successful products for high-speed optical interconnects and many other attractive applications. Thereafter, I will be discussing some novel silicon photonics devices/circuits recently demonstrated at IIT Madras and elsewhere in India. Speaker’s Bio: Bijoy Krishna Das obtained his master degree in solid state physics from Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, India (in 1996) and PhD degree (Dr.rer.nat) in integrated optics from University of Paderborn, Germany (in April 2003).  Prior to his PhD research in Germany, Dr. Das started his research career in the area of integrated optics at the Microelectronics Centre, IIT Kharagpur for three years (January 1996 – December 1998). His postdoctoral research carried out in three different countries First, he was an FRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan (2004-2005). Later, he joined as a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Optical Technologies, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA. In April 2005, he rejoined the Integrated Optics Group in University of Paderborn as Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter and continued his research on integrated nonlinear optical devices. He also worked for a while at Laboratoire Aime Cotton, CNRS, Orsay, France. Since August 2006, Dr. Das has been associated with the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, where he is presently holding a full Professor position. He is also heading the Centre for Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuits and Systems (CPPICS), funded by the MeitY, Govt. of India. Register here to attend Note: The webinar is free to attend, however, registration is mandatory.

Silicon Photonics Technology for Next-Generation Connectivity and Sensing

Speaker’s Bio: Shankar Kumar Selvaraja is Prof. Ramakrishna Rao chair professor at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering in the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. He is also the Chair of the National Nano fabrication Centre (NNfC) at IISc. Before joining IISc in 2014, he was with imec Belgium. He received his PhD for his work on wafer-scale fabrication technology for Silicon photonic integrated circuits from Ghent university-imec Belgium. He is an alma mater of Bharathiar University, College of Engineering Guindy and University of Twenty the Netherlands. He has spent over 15 years in Silicon and integrated photonic developing state-of-the-art CMOS process and device technology for high-speed optical interconnect and sensing application. He has published over 200 research articles in international journals and conferences and six international patents. He is a recipient of the DST-SERB Early Carrier Researcher Award and Visvesvaraya young faculty research fellowship award from the ministry of electronics and information technology. His current area of research includes silicon photonic IC enabled high-speed optical connectivity technology, integrated photonic based on-chip sensors, neuromorphic photonics and quantum photonic integrated circuit. Abstract: Silicon photonics is a disruptive technology that is changing the technology landscape in communication and sensing. The ability to confine light in sub-micron space offers an excellent opportunity to manipulate light that was unimaginable. Silicon photonics now covers a wide range of CMOS compatible material platform. In this talk, I will present a demonstration of photonic integrated circuit enabled connectivity and sensing. In the first part, the talk will cover high-speed photonic device and circuit for next-generation connectivity demonstration. Furthermore, potential material and device platform to realise neuromorphic photonic circuit will be presented. In the second part of the talk, a comprehensive application of photonic IC for on- chip sensing will be presented, including exciting ways to realise heterogeneous integration of sensors platforms.   Register here to attend Note: The webinar is free to attend, however, registration is mandatory.

Programmable Photonics

Abstract of the talk: Programmable photonic circuits are chips that manipulate light, and whose functionality can be configured through a layer of electronics and software. This programmability enables new functionality, and opens the path to general-purpose photonic chips, similar to field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) or digital signal processors (DSP) in electronics. We will discuss the basic photonic technology blocks for these photonic circuits, and all the technological layers around it to make them programmable. The programmability in itself opens up many opportunities for new application spaces and could eventually put photonic chips in the hands of the maker community.   Register here to attend Note: The webinar is free to attend, however, registration is mandatory.