Photonics for Smart Cities

We review the current applications of photonic technologies to Smart Cities. Inspired by the future needs of Smart Cities, we then propose potential applications of advanced photonic technologies. We find that photonics already has a major impact on Smart Cities, in terms of smart lighting, sensing, and communication technologies. We further find that advanced photonic technologies could lead to vastly improved infrastructure, such as smart water‐supply systems. We conclude by proposing directions for future research that will have the greatest impact on realizing Smart City initiatives

On observation of dispersion in tunable second-order nonlinearities of silicon-rich nitride thin films

We present experimental results on second-harmonic generation in non-stoichiometric, silicon-rich nitride (SRN) films. The as-deposited film presents a second-order nonlinear coefficient, or \c{hi}(2), as high as 8pm/V. This value can be widely tuned using the electric field induced second harmonic effect (EFISH), and a maximum value of 22.7pm/V was achieved with this technique. We further illustrate that the second-order nonlinear coefficient exhibited by these films can be highly dispersive in nature, and requires further study and analysis to evaluate their viability for in-waveguide applications at telecommunication wavelengths