Ming C. Wu (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Ming C. Wu

BPN671: Tunable Silicon Photonics for Microsecond Wavelength Selective Switching

Anthony M. Yeh
2013

The wavelength selective switch (WSS) is a key enabling component for many optical circuit switching (OCS) architectures, which have the potential to allow datacenters to continue scaling beyond the cost and power efficiency constraints of current electrical networks. The applicability of these OCS networks in real-world datacenters is highly dependent on the speed and optical loss of the WSS elements. We have demonstrated a grating-based WSS in silicon photonics that improves on these metrics and allows greater integration potential relative to previously demonstrated MEMS-based WSS...

BPN678: MEMS-Electronic-Photonic Heterogeneous Integration (MEPHI)

Niels Quack
Behnam Behroozpour
Sangyoon Han
Phillip Sandborn
2014

Active III-V photonic components and passive Si photonic circuits are integrated with CMOS electronic circuits in this project. The modular MEMS-Electronic-Photonic Heterogeneous Integration (MEPHI) platform will make use of the high performance of the individual components and integrate (1) MEMS tunable VCSEL with high-index-contrast grating (HCG) mirrors, (2) photodetectors, (3) Si photonic waveguides, couplers, and interferometers, (4) high-efficiency vertical optical coupler between III-V and Si waveguides, and (5) CMOS circuits for frequency control and temperature compensation...

BPN651: Low Power, Low Noise Cavity Optomechanical Oscillators

Alejandro J. Grine
Turker Beyazoglu
Tristan Rocheleau
2014

Cavity optomechanics is a new and rapidly advancing field in which light is used to alter the properties of a mechanical element. Our project specifically aims to enhance mechanical motion by means of optical radiation pressure in a cavity of both high optical and mechanical quality factors. When enough light is built up in such a cavity, the mechanical self-oscillation results in precisely modulated light at the cavity output. Though there may be numerous applications for cavity optomechanics, we seek to use optomechanical oscillators as a replacement for power-hungry microwave...

BPN733: Optoelectronic Tweezers for Long-Term Single Cell Culture

Shao Ning Pei
Tiffany Dai
2015

In contrast to bulk analysis, analyzing biological samples on a single-cell level is a powerful tool in deriving a more complete, quantitative understanding of cellular behavior. The optoelectronic tweezers (OET) platform utilizes light-generated dielectrophoretic force to manipulate micro-scale objects reconfigurably on the device surface. Consequently, OET is able to select for individual cells and manipulate them into a specific configuration where these cells are cultured and studied for an extended period of time. Compared to trap-based single-cell techniques, the OET platform...

BPN609: Ultra-Sensitive Photodetectors on Silicon Photonics

Ryan Going
Tae Joon Seok
2015

As CMOS devices shrink in physical size, electrical interconnects between the devices will consume an ever-greater proportion of total chip power. A promising solution is to use silicon photonics for intra- and inter-chip communications. To be cost effective, both the optical transmitter and receiver should be made small, highly efficient, and CMOS compatible. Shrinking the photodiode will increase sensitivity and energy efficiency, but as it gets very small, the capacitance of the wire to the first amplifying stage in the receiver becomes significant. We present a solution which...

BPN676: Q-Boosted Optomechanical Oscillators

Turker Beyazoglu
Tristan Rocheleau
2015

This project aims to demonstrate Radiation Pressure driven Optomechanical Oscillators (RP-OMOs) with low phase noise and low power operation suitable for various applications in optical and RF communications. In particular, chip scale atomic clocks with low power consumption can be realized by replacing its power-hungry quartz-based microwave synthesizer with the proposed RP-OMO structure. The Q-boosted RP-OMO design approach of this work makes it possible to optimize both optical and mechanical design to simultaneously reduce the phase noise and threshold power of these oscillators...

BPN820: Multicast Silicon Photonic MEMS Switches

Sangyoon Han
Tae Joon Seok
2016

Silicon photonic switches have been developed for fast and low-cost optical switching. However most of demonstration is still limited in unicast operation. In this project, we develop a silicon photonic switch that is capable of multicast switching. We have implemented silicon photonic switches with movable waveguide couplers that can control power splitting ratio precisely. The switch has 4x20 ports, fast switching time (<9.6 us), low optical insertion loss (<4.0 dB), and small footprint (1.2 mm x 4.5 mm). We have demonstrated 1- to-2 and 1-to-4 multicast operation with the...

BPN798: Hyper Wideband-Enabled RF Messaging (HERMES)

TBD
2016

The goal of the hyper-wideband enabled RF messaging (HERMES) project is to investigate advanced micro- systems and techniques for jam-resistant radio frequency (RF) communications. Hyper wideband (HWB) code division multiple access (CDMA) offers many unprecedented benefits for RF communications, including robust resistance to jamming and inference signals, and large coding gain for high data rate communications. Current challenges with implementing such HWB CDMA are the complexity and high power consumption of electrically based systems, particularly the receivers that are suitable...

BPN665: Frequency Modulated Laser Source for 3D Imaging

Phillip Sandborn
2016

In recent years we have seen a growing demand for 3D cameras for applications such as gaming, entertainment, and autonomous vehicles. Present solutions suffer from high power dissipation and large size. This project leverages heterogeneous integration of standard CMOS electronics with high performance optical components including lasers, photo-diodes, interferometers and waveguides to reduce size, cost, and power dissipation.

Project end date: 08/25/16

BPN825: Direct On-Chip Digital Optical Synthesizer (DODOS)

Jean-Etienne Tremblay
Guan-Lin Su
Kyungmok Kwon
2018

The advent of precise microwave frequency synthesis in the 1940’s enabled a disruptive revolution in the capabilities enabled by microwave technology, including wireless and wireline communications, RADAR, electronic warfare, and atomic sensors and timing technology. It is envisioned that the DODOS program will advance a similar transformative revolution based on ubiquitous optical frequency synthesis technology. Laboratory-scale optical frequency synthesis was successfully realized in 1999 with the invention of self-referenced optical frequency combs based on femto-second pulse-...