U.S. Laboratory Successfully Tests Nanoscale Silicon Waveguide Technology

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced the development of the world’s first truly nanoscale silicon waveguide that enables chip-on-board communication.

The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory released a new type of quasi-particle called "mixed plasmon polaritons" to relieve the previous attempts to develop a new operating mode for silicon photonic devices to optimize the photonic and plasma systems. Obstacles to optical loss encountered on the way.

The method used in the laboratory combines high quantum confinement with low signal loss, and also opens the door for nanoscale on-chip lasers, quantum operations, and single photon all-optical switches.

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Materials Science researchers said that “mixed plasmon polariton” will open a new wave of nano-waveguides for on-chip optical communications, signal modulation, and on-chip lasers, biomedical sensors, and other applications. era.

The quasiparticles, known as surface plasmon polaritons, are known to be used to direct light waves across a metal surface to generate surface electron waves, ie, plasma, which then interact with photons. Unfortunately, surface plasmon polaritons suffer severe signal loss when they pass through the metal.

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have addressed this issue by adding a low-k dielectric layer between the metal and the optical waveguide semiconductor components to form a metal oxide semiconductor architecture that can redistribute the incoming light waves. Low loss of optical K in the dielectric gap.

Using the “hybrid plasmon polariton” produced by the above method, it can be conducted in a more free way, allowing engineers to use standard CMOS chips to create nanoscale waveguides with optical characteristics comparable to rare triple-five semiconductor compounds. Researchers estimate that this new technology can be pushed into the commercial market in 2 to 5 years.