Leeds researchers see the light in silicon

Dr Kelsall
A consortium of researchers from the universities of Leeds, Warwick, Southampton, St. Andrews and Surrey have been awarded more than £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. 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 ultra-fast, 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 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.”
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.

www.leeds.ac.uk