3D integrated photonic nanostructures with Giant optical nonlinearity

Introduction

Photonics has a major impact on technological innovations and can revolutionize the field of computing and data processing due to its high bandwidth, speed, and low power consumption. This has already happened for data communication via fiber-optic connections, while light processing in embedded systems is still performed by electronics via power-hungry optical-electrical conversion.

Future Development

The future development of integrated photonics is then waiting for new integrable materials that can advance the functionality of photonic chips towards all-optical signal processing at very low light intensities.

Challenges in Nonlinear Optical Functions

While linear operations and parallel matrix multiplication can be efficiently performed by light, nonlinear optical functions are notoriously difficult to implement because they require a suitable medium for efficient photon-photon interaction. Currently, there is a lack of materials with:

• Large third-order nonlinearity
• High speed
• Easy processability and integration in 2D and 3D structures

Project Goals

3DnanoGiant aims to develop new nonlinear photonic materials that can be integrated into heterogeneous functional platforms or chiplets.

Methodology

To this end, I will exploit the giant optical nonlinearity of liquid crystals (ten orders of magnitude larger than that of silicon) for new formulations and lithographic strategies by which the liquid crystals will be confined in a printable nano-porous polymer network.

Innovations

Their 3D nanopatterning will enable the production of multidimensional hybrid nonlinear photonic devices, including:

1. All-optical 2D logic gates
2. Ultrafast nonlinear activation functions
3. Self-oscillating 3D photonic crystals

In parallel, the propagation, interaction, and polymerization of solitons in a 3D(+1) space will lay the foundation for a new unsupervised bottom-up 3D printing technology.

Conclusion

The goals of 3DnanoGiant will redefine the state-of-the-art in integrated nonlinear photonics with practical and versatile heterogeneous chips for fast and energy-efficient optical processing.