Photonics, Optics and Lasers

Radio Frequency and mixed signal electronics face performance limitations due to the limited circuit complexity possible in typical high-speed/high-dynamic-range compound semiconductor integrated circuit technologies. By integrating these high-performance electronics with deep submicron silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (Si CMOS) technology, designers can exploit the ultra large scale integration density of Si CMOS to combine complex signal processing and self-correction architectures with the highest performance compound semiconductor electronics, thus achieving unprecedented levels of performance (e.g. bandwidth, dynamic range, power consumption).

High performance optoelectronic systems, e.g. ultra low-noise lasers and optoelectronic signal sources, are employed in numerous applications such as fiber optic communications, high-precision timing references, LADAR, imaging arrays, etc. Current state-of-the-art ultra-low noise lasers and optoelectronic signal sources use macro-scale photonics for mechanical and thermal noise suppression, and off-chip electronics for feedback control. The benchtop or rack mount component-level assembly of these sources limits photonic coupling efficiency as well as the speed of electronic feedback, and also adds size and weight to the system. Integration of these components in a chip-scale form factor could greatly mitigate these limitations.

The DAHI Foundry Technology program thrust seeks to establish an accessible, manufacturable technology for device-level heterogeneous integration of a wide array of materials and devices (including, for example, multiple electronics and MEMS technologies) with complex silicon-enabled (e.g. CMOS) architectures on a common silicon substrate. of The DAHI Foundry Technology thrust will incorporate and build upon the heterogeneous integration technologies of the COSMOS and E-PHI program thrusts, while also developing new capabilities in heterogeneous integration processes, yield and circuit design innovation. 

The Direct On-Chip Digital Optical Synthesizer (DODOS) program seeks to create a technological revolution in optical frequency control analogous to the disruptive advances in microwave frequency control in the 1940s.

Conventional analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are fundamentally limited by timing jitter in the sampling source, forcing a trade-off between bandwidth and resolution. As a result, radio frequency (RF) systems are typically designed with narrow-bandwidth channels. These engineering constraints present problems when faced with broadband signals and ultra-short pulses. At high carrier frequencies, RF systems are further limited by the tuner that must mix down to baseband for electronic digitization.