Optics on a Microchip

Optical communication systems have been celebrating their success for more than two decades. Yet the signal processing is still performed electronically, which limits the data processing speed and bandwidth. A fundamentally different approach allowing to overcome the limitations of electronics is all-optical signal processing on a microchip. This approach is very promising, but requires more work to become practical. Being a part of Photonics Group at the University of Toronto, I am thrilled to contribute to this exciting and practically important area.

Photonics group at the ECE Department at the University of Toronto has been working to enable practical realization of all-optical devices for telecommunications, lab-on-a-chip, sensors, and many other applications. We are happy to have the Emerging Communication Technologies Institute at the University of Toronto that provides us an access to the state-of-the-art electron beam lithography apparatus and microfabrication clean room facilities. Equipped with these advanced tools, so important for successful research in integrated optics, we collaborate with each other to accelerate the progress in the field.

The group of Prof. Herman studies and develops novel laser processing technology for defining photonic devices by femtosecond laser writing. Prof. Aitchison's group is looking into integrated optical devices for communications and nonlinear optical applications, plasmonic waveguide sensors and lab-on-a-chip. Prof. Qian's group is working on ultrafast optical phenomena in semiconductors, and advanced optical amplifier technology. Prof. Helmy's research is focused on III-V semiconductors-baser photonic devices, including lasers, modulators, switches, and nonlinear optical devices. Prof. Joyce Poon's group research focus is on novel optoelectronic devices for high-performance communication and computing systems. Prof. Ofer Levi's group is looking into developing biomedical imaging systems and optical bio-sensors based on semiconductor devices. Photonics group has prepared many exciting presentations to share with everyone at CLEO. I will tell you more specifics about the upcoming talks and posters within the next couple of days.

As I am writing it, my airplane is to arrive to San Francisco in a couple of hours. I cannot believe that the CLEO conference is only a day away!