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Engineering and technology
- Nanophotonics
Heterogeneous integration in photonics involves wafer-scale integration of non-native materials or devices onto a photonic platform. This integration enhances the toolkit for building photonic systems-on-chip, which excel in size, weight, power efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. In the context of silicon photonics, certain building blocks—such as lasers, amplifiers, detectors beyond 1600nm, electro-optic modulators, and optical isolators—cannot be natively implemented. However, alternative materials like III-V semiconductors, thin-film materials, and bulk crystals (e.g., InP, GaAs, GaSb, GaN, LiNbO3-on-insulator, PZT, BTO, 2D materials, NbTiN, Ti:Sapphire, YIG) can address these limitations. A technique that is gaining traction recently is the use of micro-transfer printing for heterogeneous integration. This project aims to develop this technique to enable complex photonic systems-on-chip.