Dries Van Thourhout - ULPPIC

Onderstaande beschrijving is in het Engels:

Dries received the degree in physical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium in 1995 and 2000 respectively.

From Oct. 2000 to Sep. 2002 he was with Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories, New Jersey, USA, working on the design, processing and characterization of InP/InGaAsP monolithically integrated devices. In Oct. 2002 he joined the Department of Information Technology (INTEC), Ghent University, Belgium. Currently he is member of the permanent staff of the photonics group. Since 2008 he has a position as full time research professor. He is lecturer or co-lecturer for 4 courses within the Ghent University Master in Photonics program (Microphotonics, Advanced Photonics Laboratory, Photonic Semiconductor Components and Technology). He is also coordinating the cleanroom activities of the research group.

His research focuses on the design, fabrication and characterization of integrated photonic devices. Main topics involve Silicon nanophotonic devices, heterogeneous integration of InP-on-Silicon and integration of colloidal nanocrystals on silicon. Besides he is working on the development of new fabrication processes for photonic devices, e.g. based on focused ion beam etching and die-to-wafer bonding.

He has authored and coauthored over 100 journal papers (see below), 12 patents (3 granted) and has presented invited papers and tutorials at several major conferences. He is member of IEEE Photonics Society and associate editor for IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. He is currently coordinating the EU projects WADIMOS and SMARTFIBER.

 

Contact: Dries.VanThourhout@UGent.be

Publications: http://photonics.intec.ugent.be/contact/people.asp?ID=50

 

Ultralow power photonic integrated devices for short scale interconnect networks

The communication bandwidth on and between the processors forming the core of the newest computing systems is very rapidly increasing. It is now generally recognized that current electrical solutions will not suffice to fulfil all requirements for communication on-chip and between chips. Therefore we have to look for alternatives. Optical interconnect is a possibility and is currently heavily investigated for this purpose.  However, the requirements in terms of power consumption are very stringent and the current solutions being proposed are still off by an order of magnitude.  Therefore, the objective of this project is to propose, design, fabricate and characterise photonic devices with fundamental lower power consumption through exploiting a large overlap between optical field, active material and electrical drive signals.  For this purpose, we will build a completely new photonics integration platform consisting of self-assembled semiconductor materials as the active core element, embedded within strongly confined photonic cavities defined using the most advanced semiconductor fabrication technologies.  Thereby we are combining rapidly maturing bottom-up techniques such as colloidal nanocrystal synthesis and semiconductor nanowire growth with traditional top-down technologies for realizing completely new types of photonic devices with an order of magnitude improvement in device performance. To reach this objective I will build a multidisciplinary team with experts in photonic device design, wet chemical synthesis, solid state physics, epitaxial nanowire growth and microelectronic fabrication technologies.