NSF Materials World Network: Creating Optoelectronic Materials and Devices Inside Microstructured Optical Fibers

光纤的发展直接导致了20世纪末的数据通信革命，现在正在影响从遥感到生物医学的许多其他领域。这种影响在一定程度上是因为有源器件的快速发展，对有源器件来说，光纤不仅充当无源波导，而且作为直接调制、产生或以其他方式操纵光的介质。由于这种多功能性，光纤在几乎任何用光的应用中都构成了系统的关键组件。在光子学取得这些突破的同时，计算机和微电子行业自20世纪60年代S提出中央处理器和动态随机存取存储器芯片的晶体管的性价比以来，每18个月就出现指数级的增长，光电元件的相应改进，如用于DVD播放机的可见光激光器，以及用于在光纤中产生和调制用于数据通信的光的红外激光二极管。几乎每个科学家和工程师都熟悉作为所有微电子技术基础的晶体半导体，即硅、锗、砷化镓和许多其他材料。以光纤为代表的先进技术领域，基于非常长、非常薄的玻璃和基于光刻制造的平面芯片的微电子，通常被集成起来，通过使用中间光学和封装来创建通信网络系统。然而，我们正在开发的技术允许由硅和锗制成的晶体半导体结构直接进入光纤本身。这项技术利用了与现代平面电子设备类似的沉积过程，从而为直接将光纤的光导能力与半导体操纵光和电子的特殊能力相结合开辟了可能性。这表明，目前由平面光电子学执行的许多功能现在可能直接集成到光纤本身中，许多无法在传统平面几何结构中实现的新半导体器件现在可能成为可能。先进的技术应用需要高性能的器件，而高性能器件又需要特殊的材料；我们致力于基础材料研究和开发，将这一创新从实验室转移到下一代光子器件和系统。

The development of optical fibres led directly to the data communications revolution of the late 20th century and are now impacting many other fields from remote sensing to biomedicine. This impact is growing in part because of rapid advances in active devices for which the fibre serves not merely as a passive waveguide, but as a medium to directly modulate, generate, or otherwise manipulate light. As a result of this versatility, fibres form key components of systems in almost any applications that use light. In parallel with these breakthroughs in photonics, the computer and microelectronics industries has seen exponential growth every 18 months since the 1960's of the performance to price ratio of transistors on CPU and DRAM chips, with commensurate improvements in optoelectronic components such as the visible lasers used in DVD players, and the infrared laser diodes used to generate and modulate light for data communications in optical fibres. The crystalline semiconductors upon which all microelectronics is based, namely silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide and many others, are familiar to almost every scientist and engineer. The advanced technological fields represented by fibre optics that are based on very long, very thin strands of glass and microelectronics based on planar chips fabricated by lithography, are typically integrated to create communication network systems by using intermediate optics and packaging. However, the technology we are developing allows crystalline semiconductor structures made from silicon and germanium directly inside the optical fibre itself. This technique utilises a deposition process similar to that used for modern planar electronic devices and so opens up the possibility for directly combining the light guiding capabilities of optical fibres with the exceptional capabilities of semiconductors for manipulating light and electrons. This suggests that many of the functions currently performed by planar optoelectronics might now be integrated directly inside the fibre itself, and that many new semiconductor devices that cannot be realised in a conventional planar geometry may now become possible. Advanced technological applications demand high performance devices, which in turn require exceptional materials; our efforts focus on the fundamental materials research and development necessary to move this innovation beyond the laboratory to next generation photonic devices and systems.