The device, based on silicon and barium titanate, anticipates what the market will require in the next three or four years and opens the door to faster and more efficient optical computing.
“The chip incorporates a high-speed tuner that can also be non-volatile, meaning it doesn't need a constant power supply. This allows energy consumption to be reduced exponentially compared to current circuits,” highlights José Capmany, director of PRL-UPV and principal investigator of the project, which has been published in the journal Nature Photonics.
Furthermore, it achieves switching times on the order of 80 nanoseconds, significantly faster than traditional thermo-optical systems. “In this way, its tuning speed is more than two orders of magnitude faster than current technology, allowing its use in applications requiring very high switching speeds, such as providing alternative interconnection paths in data centers in case of failure,” adds Cristina Catalá, first author of the article and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente
Among the main applications of this new chip are 6G communications, data centers, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, sensors, advanced medicine, photonic computing, and quantum technologies. In all these fields, according to the UPV's Occupational Risk Prevention department, the need to process more information with less energy consumption is constantly growing.
It functions like a light microprocessor
The device functions as a kind of "light microprocessor": it can be reconfigured to perform different tasks, but instead of processing electrical signals, it works with optical signals. The key to its development lies in the use of a hybrid silicon and barium titanate platform, a ferroelectric material capable of retaining its programmed state.
“Unlike conventional photonic systems, which require continuous power to maintain a configuration, this chip can ‘remember’ the programmed circuit without a constant power supply,” explains Daniel Pérez, CTO of iPronics, a UPV spinoff company that also participated in the study. This characteristic allows it to overcome one of the major obstacles of programmable integrated photonics: energy consumption and the heat generated when scaling circuits.
“In current technologies, based on thermo-optical effects, each programmable element requires constant energy, which makes designing chips with thousands of components difficult. The new device reduces this static power consumption to virtually zero. Compared to conventional electronic chips, our system allows information to be manipulated using light, reducing losses and opening up new possibilities for future computing architectures,” concludes José Rausell, a member of the PRL team.
Along with the PRL team, researchers from iPronics Programmable Photonics SL - which emerged from the iTEAM-UPV laboratories; the Swiss company Lumiphase AG and the French company CEA Leti - one of the main manufacturers of silicon photonic chips in Europe; and the University of West Attica, in Greece, have also participated in its development.
The development of this new chip is one of the results of NEoteRIC, the first European project to apply programmable photonics (which works with light waves) to biomedical applications, a "disruptive technology that promises to revolutionize many fields, including medical diagnostics." It is also part of the ERC Advanced Grant ANBIT and ERC Staring Grant LS-PHOTONICS projects, which address the application of programmable photonics to computing and the scaling of programmable photonic circuits, respectively.
About Photonics Research Lab
Photonics Research Lab (PRL) is a group at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) that promotes scientific projects with real impact, applying photonics and optics to strategic sectors such as telecommunications, mobility, biomedicine or industry.
Comprised of more than 50 researchers, PRL is a multidisciplinary group committed to a science that transcends the laboratory, generating solutions that improve processes, boost competitiveness and directly benefit society.
