Nanowerk November 29, 2022
Harnessing the full complexity of optical fields requires the complete control of all degrees of freedom within a region of space and time. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, industry, State University of New York, Rochester Institute of Technology, ARL (Rome), UK, Canada) resolved this challenge with a programmable photonic crystal cavity array enabled by four key advances: (1) near-unity vertical coupling to high-finesse microcavities through inverse design; (2) scalable fabrication by optimized 300 mm full-wafer processing; (3) picometre-precision resonance alignment using automated, closed-loop ‘holographic trimming’; and (4) out-of-plane cavity control via a high-speed μLED array. Combining each, they demonstrated the near-complete spatiotemporal control of a 64 resonator, two-dimensional spatial light modulator with nanosecond- and femtojoule-order switching. They also pioneered a fabrication process that ensures the device quality remains near-perfect when it is manufactured at scale. This would make their device more feasible to implement in real-world settings…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Conventional versus inverse-designed PhC cavities. Credit: Nature Photonics volume 16, pages834–842 (2022)