DARPA funds new photonics center

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, Sept 3, 2004

The University of Illinois has received a $6.2 million, four-year grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency to create a photonic research center to develop ultrafast light sources for high-speed signal processing and optical communications systems. The University of Illinois is the lead university for the center. Partner institutions are Columbia University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Harvard University.

"The Hyper-Uniform Nanophotonic Technology Center's mission is to develop critical technologies--including hyper-uniform nanophotonic fabrication methods, high-performance quantum dot arrays, and ultrafast lasers--for optoelectronic interconnects," said Norman Cheng, director of the center.

A primary focus of the center is to improve laser technology that is now feasible because of the ultrafast light-emitting transistor recently discovered by center researchers. The light-emitting transistor can modulate electrical and optical signals simultaneously, and could extend the modulation bandwidth of a semiconductor light source from 20GHz to more than 100GHz.