Silicon carbide as a monolithic platform for integrated optoelectronics
Abstract
Silicon Carbide (carborundum, SiC) is a material commonly used in everyday applications, including abrasives, power electronics (including for electric cars), and as a less expensive substitute for diamond in jewelry. It is also a very robust and radiation hard material used to build sensors for harsh environments (high temperature, in particular in space exploration). It is available on even 6 inch wafers commercially (with 8 inch under development), and like no other material, it has a combination of appealing optical, mechanical, and electrical properties. Demonstration of scalable optical information processing in this material would open numerous opportunities for use of optics in environments where its cousin silicon (the most common electronics and photonics material) would fail, including high speed communications in space and remote sensing. What is additionally appealing about silicon carbide is that its processing is no different from that of silicon, and that commercial foundries could be reconfigured to process it easily without any crosscontamination issues. We here propose to develop and demonstrate a scalable, monolithic silicon carbide integrated optoelectronics platform, with advantages relative to silicon photonics in applications requiring radiation hardness and operation in harsh environments (i.e., high temperature and high pressure, which is crucial for space exploration). The proposed work builds upon our group’s pioneering developments of SiC on insulator and demonstrations of high quality classical and quantum photonics in this material. We will focus on developing components that can be combined into small scale optoelectronic systems in SiC for optical interconnects, and for long distance ranging measurement, which are crucial for remote sensing. We will demonstrate all required building blocks to demonstrate small functional systems for optical interconnects and remote sensing in SiC, and finally demonstrate prototypes of full systems at scale.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Feb 29, 2024
- Source ID
- FA95502310248
Entities
People
- Jelena Vučković
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Stanford University
- United States Air Force