Optical microchip breakthrough at the U of T
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May 26, 16:29 EDT
Optical microchip breakthrough reported at U of T
From Canadian Press
Canadian-based researchers have reported a world-beating breakthrough in
photonics - the emerging science of using light instead of electrons in computers
and other devices.
While it's now commonplace to run lasers through glass fibre to transmit data,
fibre-optic technology currently ends where information processing begins: the
light pulses must be converted to electron flows administered by computer
chips.
Major corporate and university research teams worldwide have been devoting
massive resources to developing an all-optical system.
Now, University of Toronto researchers affiliated with the Canadian Institute for
Advanced Research say they have produced a silicon-based material that can
trap light, controlling it the same way microchips control electrons.
An optical microchip would be revolutionary - potentially much faster and more
efficient than electronic chips and opening up wide new possibilities for
innovative technology.
''This is what everyone has been waiting for in order to go all-optical,'' Geoffrey
Ozin, a U of T materials chemist who developed the material with Sajeev John, a
theoretical physicist, said Friday.
The technology could be as ''disruptive'' as the replacement of vacuum tubes by
transistors, Ozin said.
John has been working on theories of ``caging'' light since doing his Harvard
PhD thesis in 1984. Ozin - working independently in the building next to John's -
had been developing ideas on laying down silicon on porous materials.
Ozin's techniques for growing silicon in holes - in this case the crystalline
structure of opals - were what John needed.
''Even with the laser and all the things it can do, there has not been any real
material that can micro-manipulate the flow of light in the same way that the
semiconductor does to electrons,'' John said.
''And that's why this line of research, and in particular this breakthrough, is
really important.''
A spokesman for the institute said John, Ozin and a student of Ozin, Emmanuel
Chomski, hold the intellectual property rights to the development.
''Clearly, every major corporation in the world is looking at this,'' Ozin said.
''The question is, where do we go from here?''
and a follow-up article from the Toronto star?
The Toronto Star Business Story
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May 27, 2000
U of T team in race to develop `optical chip'
`This is the next trillion-dollar industry': Backer
By John Spears
Toronto Star Business Reporter
A trio of researchers at the University of Toronto have produced a groundbreaking material
that could use light pulses, instead of electrons, to drive computers and other devices.
``This is the next trillion-dollar industry,'' said Gerard Lynch, chief executive of Photonics
Research of Ontario, which has helped support the research.
Lynch likened the production of the material, which can trap and manipulate light signals, to
the invention of the transistor, which replaced the vacuum tube.
``The ultimate goal is to have the all-optical computer chip, meaning that all data processing
and computing is done by light instead of electricity,'' said Sajeev John, the U of T physicist
who developed the theory leading to the breakthrough.
The big question now, said team member Geoffrey Ozin, a U of T chemist, is whether
Canadian researchers and companies can maintain the momentum and take advantage of the
breakthrough.
Teams of researchers in public and private labs around the world have been working on the
same problem and will be poised to jump, he said.
``It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Canada,'' Ozin said. `` To me this is a matter of
national concern.''
The advantage of using light in computers is that light pulses don't interfere with each other the
way electrical currents do.
Light signals can be packed tightly together, and even pass through each other. That permits
smaller circuits and faster speeds.
`It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Canada. To
me this is a matter of national concern.'
- U of T chemist Geoffrey Ozin
And as telecommunications firms race to build optical networks, they'll need more optical
components.
The new material ``would make things much more seamless, potentially faster, potentially
better performance for some of the optical interconnects,'' said John - who was in Ottawa
yesterday talking to officials atNortel Networks Corp.
But the road to the new material, developed in collaboration with Ozin and Henry van Driel,
was a crooked one. In fact, Sajeev John journeyed all the way to Spain before he learned the
man who could help with his revolutionary idea - Ozin - worked in the building next door, back
at U of T.
John's idea, developed in the 1980s, was to build a three-dimensional lattice of material, unlike
a two-dimensional microchip. Each strand in the lattice would be 1.5 microns in diameter.
There are 10,000 microns in a centimetre.
The reason for the specific diameter: It matches the wavelength used in optical
telecommunications signals, and can trap and re-route the photons, or particles.
Unluckily, no one could figure out how to build the delicate latticework. Ozin, for one, had no
interest. He was developing strands of material thousands of times thinner and designed to
carry electrons.
Then John visited a lab in Spain, where scientists were building perfect, synthetic crystals of
opal. John knew that the spaces between the silica spheres that make up an opal crystal are 1.5
microns wide - just the framework needed to build his latticework.
The problem: How to delicately coat the crystalline spheres with silicon, then remove the
crystal and leave the silicon latticework.
The Spaniards said that was just the sort of thing that Ozin might be good at - in his chemistry
lab back at U of T.
When John returned home and pitched his ideas to Ozin, he eventually agreed. Working with
John and Van Driel, they developed a chemical process for producing the material. |
