Polymer rare earth nanoparticle waveguide amplifier

光子学技术和纳米技术在加拿大被广泛认为是竞争活动的重要领域，因为它们有潜力产生在健康、工程、环境、制造和通信方面具有重大经济影响的新科学、新技术和新市场。光子学大致指的是使用光来传输、更改、存储或检索信息。纳米技术关注的是利用物体变得非常小时出现的基本新特性。该项目结合了这两个战略领域的机会。它描述了制造含有稀土离子(如铒)的微小颗粒(纳米颗粒)的方法，这些离子可用于放大光学信号。该项目还描述了在聚合物(塑料)材料中定位这些纳米颗粒的非常简单的方法，这些聚合物(塑料)材料可以被制造成导光的光学电路。光路的一个功能是放大电信波长约为1550 nm的光。光电子行业对光学放大器的需求很大。这些光学电路通常很难制造，但我们提出了一种简化的方法，将纳米颗粒结合到聚合物薄膜中，通过基本的光学印刷技术(称为光刻技术)将光学电路投影到聚合物薄膜中。由此产生的器件被称为聚合物稀土掺杂波导放大器(PREDWA)。更广泛地说，这项研究的突破可能会导致新类型的设备，通过在组合物中加入稀土掺杂纳米颗粒，实际上需要更少的放大或不需要放大。

Photonics technologies and nanotechnologies are widely recognized in Canada as significant domains of competitive activity because of their potential to generate new science, new technologies and new markets with significant economic impact in health, engineering, the environment, manufacturing and communications. Photonics loosely refers to the use of light to transmit, alter, store or retrieve information. Nanotechnologies are concerned with exploiting the fundamental new properties that emerge when objects are made very small. This project combines opportunities in both strategic domains. It describes methods to make tiny particles (nanoparticles) that contain rare earth ions like erbium that can be used to amplify optical signals. The project also describes very simple ways of locating these nanoparticles in polymer (plastic) materials that can be fabricated into optical circuits that will conduct light. One function of the optical circuit is to amplify light at the telecommunications wavelength around 1550 nm. Optical amplifiers are in great demand in the photonics industry. These optical circuits are normally difficult to make, but we propose simplified ways to do this by incorporating nanoparticles into polymer films into which optical circuits can be projected by elementary optical printing techniques, called photolithography. The resulting device is called a Polymer Rare Earth Doped Waveguide Amplifier (PREDWA). More generally, a breakthrough in the research might lead to new kinds of devices that actually require less or no amplification by virtue of including rare earth doped nanoparticles in the compositions.