TEMPE, AZ-According to David Huff, OIDA VP of marketing and business development, emerging nanophotonics technologies offer the potential to greatly expand the use of optoelectronics in consumer and computing applications. Huff presented the keynote address at the Nano-Giga Challenges 2007 Conference (Phoenix, AZ; March 12-16). T
“When you engineer light and materials at the quantum level, you can shake the bounds of classical optics and physics,” Huff said. “By enabling the development of high bandwidth, high-speed and ultra-small optoelectronics components, nanophotonics is allowing us to change the realm of the possible.”
Topics addressed by Huff included markets for nanophotonic technology, led by consumer and computer applications; key advances that may give new life to existing silicon photonics applications; and new quantum effect devices, such as light freezing, that will enable unique optical-processing capabilities that cannot be implemented with any current technologies. Huff also pointed out, however, that significant hurdles remain before these technologies become mainstream. Despite the fact that silicon fabrication techniques can be applied, the assembly of these devices is still quite expensive, defects in the devices must be addressed to fix loss and performance issues, and less-expensive techniques must be developed for device integration and interfaces.
“Nanophotonics offers many more capabilities than I was able to address in my talk, including sensor, bio-medical, optical refrigeration, displays, and solar energy,” said Huff. “It will be fascinating to see which applications pan out in the market.”
