Photonics is the technology that underpins fibre-optic communications and could augment electronics in future optical and optical sensing devices for engineering applications.

Making the leap from a society that uses silicon chips to one in which optical materials are at the heart of information technology, however, requires what this project's leader describes as a “seamless flow of photons” that overcomes the scattering and leakage problems caused by differences in refractive index and thermal mismatches when disparate materials are integrated.

The researchers hope that being able to couple chemically dissimilar photonic materials, such as glass-based materials and inorganic semiconductors (rare-earth doped glass, III-V compound semiconductors, and polymers) will lead to novel devices for signal processing in telecommunications, analytical devices that use mid-infrared light for chemical and biological sensors, biophotonics and imaging. There will also be applications in space exploration, environment monitoring, data storage, security, and the military.

The project has four main themes.

The first is materials and integrated waveguide engineering, second optoelectronic pump sources, third, active components, and the fourth applications.

Within materials engineering, the researchers will develop novel thin-film materials processing techniques for glass and polymers to make new types of integrated waveguides for active and passive device applications. New types of glasses offer numerous advantages over traditional silica and silicate materials for designing lasers, amplifiers, nonlinear and sensor devices. The first goal in the area of optoelectronic pumps will be to design structures based on III-V compound semiconductor technology for superluminescent light emitting diodes, diode lasers, and quantum dot structures for pumping light into glass waveguides for amplification and tuneable lasers operating in the ultraviolet-visible and near and midinfrared.

The glass and semiconductor groups are also responsible for designing integration technology for creating monolithic designs for fabrication by addressing the issues relating to thermal and refractive index mismatches.