Integrated Photonics: Challenges and Opportunities
Integrated photonics, or optics on a chip, offers solutions to many of the challenges common to traditional optics such as element alignment, stability, and size. On-chip photonic devices are aligned during fabrication and thus can’t move during operation. Since the device is so small and the components are microns away from each other, the different components tend to “see” the same environment making the devices very stable. Leveraging the microelectronics industry and its fabrication techniques, integrated photonic structures can be sub-micron in size and can be densely packed in areas of only a few mm2. In this talk, we will discuss what is integrated photonics and how do you do optics on a chip. We will look at the current challenges and answer “how come I can’t buy some integrated photonics at the store?” Finally, I will give an overview of the newly established institute for photonics and how the Rochester community fits in it.
Bio
Prof. Jaime Cardenas is an Assistant Professor in The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Optical Science and Engineering. His research was in single air interface bends and waveguide microcantilevers. After two years as a process engineer, Jaime joined the Cornell Nanophotonics Group as a postdoc and continued there as a research scientist. Prof. Cardenas recent work is focused on high efficiency optical coupling of an optical fiber to a photonic chip that is low cost and suitable for high volume manufacturing.
