Consortium
imec
Imec is a world-leading independent research centre in nano-electronics and nanotechnology. Its research focuses on the next generations of chips and systems, energy, electronics for healthcare and life sciences, sustainable wireless communication, imaging and future 3D visualization, and sensor systems for industrial applications. Imec’s research bridges the gap between fundamental research at universities and technology development in industry. Its unique balance of processing and system know-how, intellectual property portfolio, state-of-the-art infrastructure with fully equipped 300 mm and 200 mm process lines. Imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, and has offices in Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, China, and Japan.
Two imec teams are participating in SURQUID, the Photonics Research Group (PRG) at Ghent University, and the Silicon Photonics Team in imec headquarters (Leuven) headed by Joris Van Campenhout.
The PRG team at imec-Ghent is specialized in photonic integration and more specifically in silicon photonics. With 8 professors (of which 5 ERC grantees) and about 90 researchers the group works on new device concepts and technologies, new system architectures and design methodologies, new application domains and proof-of-concept demonstrations, all building on the capabilities of silicon photonics. This encompasses not only telecom and datacom applications at 1.3 and 1.55 micrometer but also sensor and biomedical applications spanning a wavelength range from the visible to the mid infrared. With respect to technology the group builds on the silicon and silicon nitride photonics platforms developed by imec (iSiPP50G, BioPIX) as well as on heterogeneous integration approaches, e.g. based on transfer printing, in its own clean room facilities at Ghent University. The group has an involvement in various European projects, including for example H2020-HOT, H2020-PIXAPP and H2020-MORPHIC.
The Silicon Photonics Team is responsible for the development and application of imec’s world-class implementation of a full silicon photonics platform in a CMOS compatible environment on 200mm and 300mm wafers. The team has generated state-of-the-art demonstrations of optical transmitters and receivers.
team members
Dries Van Thourhout
Dries Van Thourhout is with the Photonics Research Group of IMEC and also a full professor at Ghent University. His focus is on heterogeneous integration technologies on Silicon Photonics, including III-V on silicon (waferbonding and epitaxial), colloidal quantum dots on Silicon and different perovskites on Silicon. He has coordinated several EU-projects (FP6 PICMOS, FP7 WADIMOS, FP7 SMARTFIBER) and is a two times ERC Grantee. He is (co)author of over 250 journal publications. He was involved in the start-ups CALIOPA and SENTEA from the group and (co)inventor of 10+ granted patents.
Joris Van Campenhout
Joris Van Campenhout is program director of the Optical I/O industry-affiliation program at IMEC (Belgium), which targetsthe development of a scalable and industrially viable short-reach optical interconnect technology based on silicon photonics. Prior to joining IMEC in 2010, he was a post-doctoral researcher at IBM TJ Watson Research Center (USA), where he developed silicon electro-optic switches for chip-level reconfigurable optical networks. He obtained a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Ghent University (Belgium) in 2007, for his work on hybrid integration of electrically driven III-V microdisk lasers on silicon photonic waveguide circuits. Joris was awarded the IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship (USA) in 2007 and the Scientific Prize Alcatel Lucent Bell (Belgium) in 2008. He holds multiple patents and has authored or co-authored over 150 papers in the field of silicon integrated photonics.
Marianna Pantouvaki
Marianna Pantouvaki is program manager for the Optical IO Industrial Affiliation program of IMEC, Leuven, Belgium since 2011. She is responsible for the development of high-speed transmitters and novel exploratory devices for optical interconnects. From 2006 to 2010 she was a BEOL Integration engineer for the advanced Cu/low-k Interconnect pro-gram of IMEC. Between 2003 and 2006 she worked as a Research Fellow at the Ultra-Fast Photonics group, University College London (UCL), London, UK. In 2004-2005 she was also a visiting researcher at the Centre for Integrated Photonics, Ipswich, UK, developing monolithically integrated III-V-based transmitters. Marianna received the Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from UCL in 2004, for her work on all-optical signal regeneration in high bit-rate long-distance fiber systems.