NOTE: Offered in-person only.
Abstract: On-chip silicon photonic devices are poised to continue transforming capabilities across multiple sectors, including data center transceivers, optical interconnects, LiDAR, and immunoassays. While most silicon photonic components are based on traditional waveguide-based building blocks, this talk will introduce new opportunities that can be enabled by introducing subwavelength engineered features into optical waveguides and cavities. In particular, we will discuss how to deterministically modify the unit cells of photonic crystal waveguides and cavities with subwavelength engineered features to control the field distribution and peak energy density of optical modes. We will also discuss how these subwavelength engineered structures can enable enhanced performance metrics in on-chip modulators, optical nanotweezers, and optical biosensors. Finally, perspectives on scalable foundry fabrication of subwavelength engineered photonic components will be provided.
About Dr. Weiss: Sharon Weiss is a Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Materials Science at Vanderbilt University. She also serves as Director of the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Weiss received her doctorate from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. Her research group primarily focuses on silicon photonics for optical communication/datacom and optical biosensing. Weiss is a Fellow of SPIE, Optica, and AAAS and has been awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, National Science Foundation CAREER award, Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, and IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer award, as well as a Vanderbilt School of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award and Chancellor’s Award for Research.
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