Leeds Researchers see the Light in Silicon

A consortium of researchers from the universities of Leeds, Warwick, Southampton, St. Andrews and Surrey have been awarded over £5 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of a drive to revolutionise the global micro-electronics industry.

“Computers and other electronic equipment have been driven by both industry and consumer demand to deliver ever faster functionality and communications. We expect to be able to send and receive larger files of data, images and video - but this is asking a lot from copper wires,” says Dr Rob Kelsall who is leading the Leeds group.

“There would be a huge speed advantage if we could transmit this data using light. We already see this on a large scale in long-distance telephone calls, where the optical fibres under the Atlantic enable huge numbers of calls to be made to and from the US, – we now need to do this on a micro scale.”

Silicon photonics research looks to bring the speed and data capacity of optics into computers and other major electronic devices, by providing rapid communication of vast amounts of data between circuit boards and between silicon chips on the same board. This would provide the ultrafast, high-volume data transfer required for applications such as video-on-demand, high definition TV and Internet Protocol TV.

The project is looking to develop demonstrator systems in which all the optical components are made from silicon “It’s not an easy task to integrate optical and electrical components on the same silicon chip,” says Dr Kelsall, “The system will need components that convert electrical signals to optical signals, devices that transmit and amplify optical signals and others to convert them back to electrical signals again.”

“Silicon has been the material of choice for the microelectronics industry for around 40 years, partly due to the cost effective way in which it can be processed. But no-one has managed to integrate all these optical functions into silicon in a way that would take its application to the next level,” he says.

The size and complexity of the task has led to the construction of a consortium that includes world-leading researchers in the fields of electronic engineering, physics and materials science, as well as prestigious industrial partners such as computer processor giants Intel, UK technology experts QinetiQ and IMEC – the largest silicon manufacturing research laboratory in Europe.

“This is a tremendously challenging project”, said Dr. Kelsall, “but we’re all very excited that the Research Council has made a strategic investment in our consortium at a level that will allow the UK to play a leading international role in this field, and enable us to develop technology that will bring real improvements to consumer communications products.”

For further information, contact Dr. Robert W Kelsall, Institute of Microwaves & Photonics, School of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds. e-mail:  r.w.kelsall@leeds.ac.uk