On December 19, Professor Jiang Wei, an alumnus of the Kuang Yaming Honors School, delivered to the students of the top-ranking classes a lecture on the silicon photonic chip. He introduced the chip from its background, frontier research, relevant industrial application, and prospects. As a nationally-recognized scholar, Professor Jiang works with the College of Modern Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University. His research interests lie in silicon-based photonics and optical communication. In his lecture, he talked about the principle of silicon photonic chips from the fundamental perspective.
He started with an introduction to branches of information technology: information acquisition, processing, and transmission, for their essences respectively being sensing, computing, and communicating. He stressed that computing is the core of information technology, and communication technology has developed rapidly in recent years. These two, as a result, have played important roles in the development of information technology. He also pointed out that optics is of greater significance to humans then to machines.
Then, Jiang claimed that the silicon-based electronic chip is the cornerstone of modern information technology. He reviewed the history, the advantages and disadvantages of silicon-based photonics. He said that silicon-based photonics is extensively applied to technologies such as super computation, optical communication, LIDAR, and optical computing. For the expansion of its industry and market, as Jiang pointed out, the integrated optical chip is considered a promising direction of development. This is why enterprises like Intel, HP, and others put large technological resources to exploring the market. In addition, Jiang discussed the industrial development by reviewing the brief history of Luxtera Inc., the principle behind Intel’s light modulator, and IBM's initial research and attempt to increase the bandwidth.
Next, Jiang proposed that high-density integration is the trend for silicon photonic devices and expounded it with the example of research on the high-speed photonic crystal-based modulators. He also explained the challenges looming the prospects of integrated photonics, that is, the waveguide integration density, for which HP Corporate has carried out some significant research. He also briefed the high technology application and cutting-edge research such as the brain-like computing optical chips.
Finally, he put forward the prospect for the related research, believing that silicon phonotic applications will go deeper into daily life in the future. The application of research, as he put it, should bring meanings to society. He also encouraged the students to stick to their own areas of expertise and to publish more academic papers.
