Chalcogenide glasses

Main Researcher: Martin Fiers

Chalcogenide glasses have recently been introduced as a new platform for all-optical signal processing. These glasses have a very high third order kerr-nonlinearity (comparable to silicon), while having a much lower two-photon absorption, making them an excellent material for nonlinear devices.
Papers already reported efficient four-wave mixing, Raman amplification, and other third order non-linear effects. CUDOS e.g., the Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, already has much expertise in the field of chalcogenides.
Erbium-doped chalcogenide glasses exhibit photoluminescence and in the near future, effort will be made to measure stimulated emission in these erbium-doped chalcogenide systems.

Our effort is to integrate these glasses with advanced SOI technology. In this way, the processing of the chalcogenide is reduced to a bare minimum, reducing the overall cost.

These could be used for optical signal processing, photonic reservoir computing, and so on.

Other people involved:

• Martin Fiers