SUNRISE · Silicon Brillouin-assisted Optoelectronic Oscillator Based on Subwavelength Membranes
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-07-01 → 2024-09-30
- EU contribution
- €195,915
- Participants
- 4
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Silicon Brillouin-assisted Optoelectronic Oscillator Based on Subwavelength Membranes
Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are poised to bring a new revolution that will underpin the widespread deployment of light-enabled applications in the fields of communications, sensing, metrology and quantum. Silicon photonics holds the promise for large-scale, low-cost production of high-performance optoelectronic circuits leveraging existing complementary-metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) manufacturing infrastructure. However, addressing the needs of emerging applications requires the development of key building blocks that are not feasible in state-of-the-art silicon photonics technology. The Brillouin scattering (BS) process is especially important for realizing complex photonic circuits for optical communications, sensing, and quantum processing, but has been precluded in conventional silicon-on-insulator (SOI) due to strong phonon leakage towards the silica bottom cladding. The SUNRISE project aims to develop a new generation of silicon active optomechanical devices by exploiting subwavelength structuring to tailor the optical and mechanical mode properties. Its main objective is to maximize optomechanical coupling in subwavelength-engineered waveguides or resonators to achieve high Brillouin gain, surpassing the state-of-the-art, and ultimately enabling advanced on-chip data processing functionalities. The development of this optomechanical devices will pave the way towards the generation of radiofrequency signals in the MHz to GHz range, with potential applications in microwave photonics, quantum signal processing and sensing. The project has successfully addressed the development of novel subwavelength silicon membranes and suspended waveguides, auxiliary passive devices, the demonstration of stimulated BS gain in subwavelength optomechanical waveguides, and the development of resonant structures for BS enhancement. The achievement of these milestones has laid a solid foundation not only for the implementation of the optoelectronic oscillator, but also for future applications based on the developed technology.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Silicon-based technologies offer tantalizing prospects for low-cost mass production of high-performance optoelectronic circuits by leveraging the maturity of complementary-metal-oxide semiconductor facilities. However, the processing and generation of high-quality radiofrequency signals using optoelectronic oscillators is still hampered by the spectral response of Si filters, which are unable to provide a rejection band on the order of MHz. Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) has been at the core of recent stunning demonstrations of key on-chip functionalities for microwave photonics, exhibiting several properties that are ideally suited to overcome the limitation of Si photonic filters. SBS interactions can be orders of magnitude stronger in suspended Si waveguides compared to conventional optical fibers, but approaches demonstrated so far are mainly limited by trade-off between phonon lifetime and photon-phonon overlap.This project will address a completely new route to overcome the trade-off between long phonon lifetimes and large photon-phonon overlap in conventional Si optomechanical waveguides. The original idea is to exploit the unique degrees of freedom released by subwavelength Si nanostructuration to achieve flexible control of the shape and dispersion of optical and mechanical modes in order to maximize optomechanical coupling and Brillouin gain. This approach will be used to demonstrate a Si optoelectronic oscillator that exploits the intrinsic narrow linewidth of the Brillouin effect to achieve three orders of magnitude phase-noise reduction compared to the state of the art. The SUNRISE technology will open a whole new research domain in integrated optomechanics with great opportunities for fundamental and applied research. The unique expertise combination of the experienced researcher, the host institution and the two teams hosting secondments offers all the ingredients to significantly contribute to the next generation of microwave photonic systems
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101062518
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e512a04048&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5f9d3a8a7&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union