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Engineering and technology
- Display technology
- Optical fibre communications
- Microwaves, millimeter waves and THz components and circuits and systems
- Smart sensors
- Computer hardware not elsewhere classified
Today, one cannot imagine a world without electronics or
photonics. Electronic chips are everywhere: they are the
heart of our laptops and smartphones and are largely based
on monolithic silicon-based technologies. Photonics is the
science and technology that uses light and offers solutions
where today's conventional technologies are approaching
their limits in terms of speed, capacity and accuracy.
Enriching the digital electronics world with photonic chips
and materials is the foundation to the next wave of
disruptive innovations. The key challenge is to develop a
scalable technology that allows for the integration of a
heterogeneous variety of photonic chips and materials with
electronics, with a cost akin to that of a monolithic silicon
chip. This technology is micro-transfer printing. TOPTRANS
aims at installing a state-of-the-art wafer-scale microtransfer printing tool. This facility will be unique globally in
an academic setting and makes Ghent University a
reference center for heterogeneous integration for the
coming decade. The tool will contribute significantly to the
research of a multidisciplinary consortium of 17 promotors
from 6 research groups with a focus on the
photonic/electronic systems of the future, such as sensors
for autonomous vehicles, AR/VR displays, brain/computer
interfaces, quantum computers and wearables for digital
health.