CAREER: Combined Light and Carrier Localization in High-refractive Index Silicon Nanocrystal Structures: a Novel Approach for Si-based Lasers

“该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。“本学院早期职业发展项目旨在通过开发利用非周期性介质的新型发光器件来推进纳米光子学。智力优势：本学院早期职业发展项目旨在通过开发利用确定性非周期性介质中的安德森光局部化来增强硅纳米结构中的辐射跃迁的新型发光器件来推进纳米光子学。与传统的光子晶体方法不同，所提出的研究允许光子等离子体纳米结构中的态密度波动，辐射图案和局部场的宽带工程，从而实现纳米尺度上辐射过程的前所未有的控制和增强。活性材料将由嵌入氮化硅超晶格结构中的Er离子组成。这种材料提供了Er的有效激发，导致1.54 μ m的发射，这将与非周期性金属-电介质阵列中的局部模式耦合。该项目首次探索了片上光发射背景下的安德森光定位，并将导致对光和电激发敏感的光子等离子体光发射器的演示。更广泛的影响：硅基发射器和激光器的成功演示将把光学技术的范围扩展到各个领域，使集成光学在通信、加工、互连和光学生物传感中的低成本应用成为可能。该计划在波士顿大学的建立将有助于大量的教育和推广计划，为研究生（纳米光子学）和本科生（光科学）开发新课程，国际研讨会和纳米光子学短期课程向公众开放，并可免费在线访问。这些举措，再加上拟议工作的跨学科性质，将吸引许多年轻科学家进入纳米光子学、等离子体激元学和复杂介质中的光定位等新兴领域。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."This Faculty Early Career Development project aims to advance nanophotonics by developing a new class of light emitting devices exploiting aperiodic media.Intellectual Merit: This Faculty Early Career Development project aims to advance nanophotonics by developing a new class of light emitting devices that leverage Anderson light localization in deterministic aperiodic media for enhancing radiative transitions in silicon nanostructures. Differently from conventional photonic crystals approaches, the proposed research allows broadband engineering of density of states fluctuations, radiation patterns and localized fields in photonic-plasmonic nanostructures, enabling unprecedented control and enhancement of radiative processes on the nanoscale. The active material will consist of Er ions embedded in Si nitride superlattice structures. This material provides efficient excitation of Er resulting in 1.54ìm emission, which will couple with localized modes in aperiodic metal-dielectric arrays. This project explores for first time Anderson light localization in the context of on-chip light emission, and will result in the demonstration of photonic-plasmonic light-emitters susceptible of optical and electrical excitation. Broader impact: The successful demonstration of Si-based emitters and lasers will extend the reach of optical technologies into diverse fields, enabling low-cost applications of integrated optics in communication, processing, interconnects and optical biosensing. The establishment of this program at Boston University will contribute to a substantial education and outreach plan with the development of new courses for graduate (Nanophotonics) and undergraduate students (Science of Light), international symposia and short courses on Nanophotonics open to the general public and freely accessible online. These initiatives, combined with the largely interdisciplinary character of the proposed effort, will attract many young scientists to the exploding new fields of nanophotonics, plasmonics and light-localization in complex media.