Researchers integrate optical devices made of multiple materials onto single chip

Science Daily  September 29, 2021
An international team of researchers (UK, Italy, Australia) has developed transfer printing process and demonstrated its ability to place devices made of multiple materials on a single chip, all integrated within a footprint similar in size to the devices themselves. The method is based on reversible adhesion in which a device is picked up and released from its growth substrate and placed onto a new surface. The process uses a soft polymer stamp mounted on a robotic motion control stage to pick up an optical device from the substrate on which it was made. When optimized, this process does not induce any damage. They demonstrated the technique by integrated aluminum gallium arsenide, diamond, and gallium nitride optical resonators onto a single chip. These optical resonators exhibited good optical transmission, demonstrating that the integration worked well. It provides a toolbox of materials from which future systems designers can draw. The new process would enable micron-scale optical devices to be incorporated into future computer chips for high-density communications or into lab-on-a-chip bio-sensing platforms…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

The transfer-printing process of -disk resonators from their original substrate onto a host waveguide structure…Credit: Optical Materials Express Vol. 11, Issue 10, pp. 3567-3576 (2021) 

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