U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership - Visible Light-wave Generation and Manipulation through Non-Linear Waveguide Technology (VIBRANT)

Visible Light-wave, particularly green, generation and manipulation in a functional and miniaturized photonic integrated circuit is currently of significant interest for biophotonic applications as means to interrogate and characterize human tissue in order to rapidly diagnose or treat various illnesses with the promise of much improved healthcare. Current state-of-the-art optics for these applications are cumbersome, inflexible and costly.

Leveraging the technological advancement made for implementing photonic integrated circuits in data- and telecommunication, this international collaborative research will provide a low-cost solution by realizing full optical systems on a centimeter-scale chip. The research project will be carried out between the US-The Ohio State University, and Ireland- Queens University Belfast, University College Cork and Munster Technological University.

The success of this project will make significant advancements in a variety of photonic technologies, including robust, scalable, chemical and biological sensing via sensing systems on a chip that in turn, will have impact on the fields of sensing. The proposed integrated green photonic circuits involve a new architecture incorporating many integrated devices, leading to dense photonic integration on chip.

This project will also place a strong emphasis on international collaboration, undergraduate research, and outreach to high school students who are interested in careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Graduate students and postdocs working on this project will perform joint experiments with visiting team members from these four institutions.

The researchers also plan to include a short exchange visit for the students to facilitate the exchange of research experiences as well as the development of collaborations.

The goal of this US-Ireland collaborative research project is to study visible light-wave generation and manipulation through non-linear waveguide technology to realize functional photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The primary research objective is to develop a PIC technology platform in the green spectral band. To enable this technological breakthrough, the project will co-integrate the materials for second harmonic generation with silicon nitride waveguides and infrared III-V pump lasers to allow the generation of green-light on-chip.

The project will use an on-chip continuous-wave GaAs-laser emitting at 1062 nm to excite a high-Q lithium niobate (LN) ring resonator and subsequently generate the second harmonic (531 nm). Other new pulsed laser deposited- non-linear materials will be studied, developed, and characterized for efficient up-conversion. The integration technology will utilize transfer printing to evanescently and end-fire couple the non-linear materials and pump lasers with the low-loss waveguides.

Novel LN PIC designs, fabrication and hybrid integration processes will be developed. We will explore modal phase matching and periodic poling-based quasi phase matching techniques on these non-linear materials to compare effectiveness of each of these methods. The limits of the poll-free modal phase matching technique in terms of achieving high second harmonic generation/visible conversion efficiency will be investigated.

If successful, this PIC technology will offer compelling size, weight, power and cost reduction advantages and enable a wide range of emerging application in areas including sensing, security, medical, research and communication.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.