U.S. Scientist Announces Achievements in Nanoscale Waveguide Technology Research

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, under the U.S. Department of Energy, recently announced the development of the world's first true nanoscale silicon waveguide for chip-on-board communications.

Lawrence Berkeley released a new quasi-particle called "hybrid plasmon polariton" (HPP) that was previously used to develop new photonic elements. Operational modes, optical impairments encountered on the road to optimize photonics and plasma systems.

The method used in the laboratory combines high quantum confinement and low signal loss, as well as nanoscale on-chip lasers, quantum operations, and single photon all-optical switches (single). Techniques such as -photon all-optical switches) open a door.

The creation of the above research results was made by Xiang Zhang, a researcher in the materials science department of Lawrence Berkeley's laboratory and the director of the Nanoscience and Engineering Center at the University of California at Berkeley. Volunteer candidates Volker Sorger and Ziliang Ye were also involved. They stated that HPP will open a new era for nano-waveguides that support in-chip optical communications, signal modulation, and on-chip lasers, biomedical sensing, and other applications.

Quasi-particles known as surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are known to be used to direct light waves across a metal surface to generate surface electron waves--that is, plasmons-- It can then interact with photons. Unfortunately, SPP suffers severe signal loss when it passes through the metal.

One of Berkeley's researchers' methods to solve this problem is to add a low-k dielectric layer between metal and optical waveguide semiconductor components to form a metal oxide semiconductor architecture. Redistributed light waves can be redistributed into low dielectric gaps with low optical losses.

Members of the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory research team used the above method to generate HPPs that can be conducted in a more liberal manner, allowing engineers to create nanoscale waveguides with optical characteristics comparable to rare triple-V semiconductor compounds on standard CMOS wafers. Researchers estimate that this new technology can be pushed into the commercial market in 2 to 5 years.