Embedded Files
Photonics offers significant advantages over traditional electronics by using light for information processing, realizing its full potential requires efficient light manipulation through third-order nonlinear optical effects, where light interacts with itself. Current nonlinear materials often require high-power activation using high-energy pulsed lasers, limiting their large-scale application in areas like all-optical signal processing.
3DnanoGiant tackles this limitation by combining the exceptional giant optical nonlinearity of liquid crystals—ten orders of magnitude greater than silicon—with a nano-porous, 3D-printable polymer network. The nano-porous polymer network provides a 3D printable scaffold hosting a highly nonlinear material for nonlinear photonic devices working at low power. Using nanoscale 3D printing, the project will fabricate innovative nano-micro photonic nonlinear structures in 2D and 3D designs, including dynamic 3D+1 waveguide networks. Specifically, the project will focus on realizing all-optical 2D logic gates, ultrafast nonlinear activation functions, and self-oscillating 3D photonic crystals. Concurrently, research on soliton propagation, interaction, and polymerization in a 3D+1 space will lay the foundation for a new unsupervised, bottom-up 3D printing technology. These structures will exhibit high nonlinearity, high response speed, and easy integration into existing photonic platforms.
Page updated
Report abuse