ESSenTIAL : EPIXfab services specifically targeting (SME) industrial takeup of advanced silicon photonics

ePIXfab brings silicon photonics within reach of European small and medium sized enterprises, thereby building on its track record and its integration into Europractice. To this end, ePIXfab offers affordable access to standardized active and passive silicon photonic IC and packaging technology, a path from design to manufacturing and hands-on training. Based on a consortium of major research institutes with silicon photonics expertise, ePIXfab reaches out to European industry and supports them to evaluate silicon photonics in the context of concrete applications and markets. In order to ensure low-cost, quick access and scalability to manufacturing, the maturity of silicon photonic IC technology is enhanced by setting up a library of generic devices, a level of process and device benchmarking and a well maintained design flow. For the first time, devices in a standard package are offered to facilitate measurements. Training programs on the IC and packaging services are also offered, including hands-on training in making designs. Maturity, standardization and sustainability are driven by a steadily growing worldwide user base

Interfacing 3D-stacked electronic and optical NoCs with mixed CMOS-ECL bridges: A realistic preliminary assessment

The combination of optical networks-on-chip and 3D stacking represents the most promising system integration framework to overcome the communication bottleneck of future many-core processors. From an architecture viewpoint, the availability of an energy-efficient, low-latency bridge connecting the electronic network-on-chip with the optical one is as important as the maturity of the optical interconnect technology. The key design challenge consists of overcoming the inherent serial nature of optical communications, which is typically pursued by increasing either the data rate or the bit-level parallelism, or by a combination thereof. This paper explores an hybrid CMOS-ECL technology platform for bridge implementation by means of a complete logic synthesis effort. By spanning the wider configuration space of the hybrid bridge with respect to fully-CMOS realizations, the paper identifies the most energy-efficient configurations and provides a comparative assessment of achievable quality metrics. Derived results represent a solid and realistic starting point for future optimizations and for the refinement into an actual layout

Contribution to the Modelling of Electroluminescence in High Voltage Polymeric Materials

This paper compares two models describing electroluminescence under AC stress in order to gain a better understanding on the interfacial processes, responsible for light emission. Simulated data is also compared with electroluminescence measurements for LDPE samples using three types of applied voltage waveforms: sinusoidal, triangular and square

MONA - merging optics and nanotechnologies: the nanophotonics technology roadmap

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Ikebana: Ikenobo School [015]

Photograph of hanging scroll and flower arrangementIkenobo school, Kyoto, Japan

ePIXfab:The silicon photonics platform

ePIXfab-The European Silicon Photonics Support Center continues to provide state-of-the-art silicon photonics solutions to academia and industry for prototyping and research. ePIXfab is a consortium of EU research centers providing diverse expertise in the silicon photonics food chain, from training users in designing silicon photonics chips to fiber pigtailed chips. While ePIXfab provides world-wide users access to advanced silicon photonics it also focuses its attention to expanding the silicon photonics infrastructure through a network of design houses, access partners and industrial collaborations. © 2013 SPIE

Combined Structural and Photoluminescence Study of SiGe Islands on Si Substrates: Comparison with Realistic Energy Level Calculations

The Stranski–Krastanow growth of SiGe islands by deposition of SiGe alloys instead of pure Ge allows us to control both the Ge concentration and gradient in the islands. In contrast to the commonly found increasing Ge content with island height, growth conditions for islands with nearly constant and even decreasing Ge profile along the growth direction were found. Atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and high-resolution x-ray diffraction were employed to determine the islands' size, shape, lateral distance and Ge composition. Efficient photoluminescence is emitted from these islands. We show that for islands with higher Ge contents at the bottom than at the apex, transitions between heavy holes and electron $Δ_{xy}$ states in the compressive Si regions around the island's circumference dominate the photoluminescence spectra instead of the usually observed recombination between heavy holes and electrons in the $Δ_z$ valleys in the tensile Si above the island's apex. The relative importance of the $Δ_{xy}$ transitions is enhanced for lateral island distances less than 10 nm, where overlapping strain fields of neighbouring islands increase the compressive strain in the Si region between them. At intense photoexcitation, recombinations between electrons in the $Δ_z$ valleys and light holes within the islands appear in the photoluminescence spectra. These so far, for SiGe islands, unobserved transitions were identified by a quantitative modelling of the band structure within the islands and in the surrounding Si matrix based on full 3D simulations using the nextnano$^3$ package with the experimentally obtained island shape and composition as input parameters