July 21st 2014 – From the 21st to the 23rd July, Professor Eoin O’Reilly, Chief Scientist of the Tyndall National Institute, Cork, will chair the 5th International Workshop on Bismuth-containing Semi-conductors, bringing together over fifty physicists, chemists, material scientists and engineers from around the world to discuss this emerging academic and industrial area.
The workshop is sponsored by the EU FP7 project, BIANCHO (Bismide and Nitride Components for High Temperature Operation). BIANCHO is a four-year, €2.19m European research project, working to tackle the energy challenges presented by the exponential growth in internet traffic.
Many current photonic components for telecommunications applications have major intrinsic losses, with around 80% of the electrical power used by a laser chip being emitted as waste heat, for example. The presence of this waste heat necessitates the use of thermo-electric coolers and an air-conditioned environment in order to control the device temperature, cascading the energy requirements by more than an order of magnitude. BIANCHO pioneered the use of the unique properties of bismuth to eliminate the performance losses in semiconductor lasers, making them more energy efficient.
BIANCHO researchers have successfully demonstrated the first bismide-based semiconductor lasers. Not only can this affect the energy efficiency of the internet but it will also have wider implications for sensor technologies. There is already considerable interest from research groups in the US, Japan, China and beyond, who are closely following and seeking to build upon the BIANCHO results.
Tyndall National Institute, the project coordinator for BIANCHO, is host to this year’s workshop which is part sponsored by Failte Ireland. Speaking at the event, Prof O’Reilly said, ‘the Bismuth workshop is a remarkable opportunity for interdisciplinary talent to exchange ideas in an area which has a great capacity to affect real-world changes. When you consider the projections for exponential increases in internet usage, creating a more efficient internet is critical to future global energy conservation.’
The BIANCHO project included five leading European partners with complementary expertise in epitaxy, structural characterization of materials, device physics, band structure modelling, advanced device fabrication, packaging and commercialisation. Coordinated by the Tyndall National Institute (Ireland), materials’ development was led by Philipps Universitaet Marburg (Germany) and by the Semiconductor Physics Institute (SPI) of the Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (Lithuania). SPI leads MBE growth of bismuth-containing epitaxial layers and their characterization by optical, electrical, and ultrafast techniques. The University of Surrey (UK) provided unique characterisation facilities and modelling expertise, with industry input from Huawei through CIP Technologies (UK), an organisation with a long history of applied photonics innovation, particularly in the telecommunications sector.
For more information, please contact:
Julie Dorel, Tyndall National Institute, T: 0871 309 322, E: julie.dorel@tyndall.ie
Ken Waters, Hume Brophy, T: 086 790 9915, E: ken.waters@humebrophy.com
About Tyndall National Institute
Established with a mission to support industry and academia in driving research to market, Tyndall National Institute is one of Europe’s leading research centres in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) research and development and the largest facility of its type in Ireland. Established in 2004 as a successor to the National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC founded in 1982) at University College Cork, the Institute employs over 460 researchers, engineers and support staff, with a full-time graduate cohort of 135 students generating over 200 peer-reviewed publications each year.
With a network of 200 industry partners and customers worldwide, Tyndall generates around €30M income each year, 85% from competitively won contracts nationally and internationally. Tyndall is also a lead partner in European research partnerships in its core areas of ICT, communications, energy, health and the environment worth €44M, including €6M accruing to industry in Ireland (from Framework 7). Hosting the only full CMOS (metal oxide semiconductor) integrated circuit construction, Micro Electronic Mechanical systems (MEMS) and III-V Wafer Semiconductor fabrication facilities and services in Ireland, Tyndall is capable of prototyping new product opportunities for its target industries – electronics, medical devices, energy and communication. Tyndall is a globally leading Institute in its four core research areas of Photonics, Microsystems, Micro/Nanoelectronics and Theory, Modeling and Design. Tyndall is the lead institution for the Science Foundation Ireland funded Irish Photonics Integration Centre (IPIC)
About University of Surrey (United Kingdom)
The Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) at the University of Surrey is a purpose-built interdisciplinary research institute with a wide remit ranging from fundamental studies of physics on the nanoscale through to highly applied research, for example in laser technology and biosensors. The institute has a strong research output in many leading journals and has a broad patent portfolio. Research in the ATI has a strong commercial focus and several activities have successfully spun-out into companies through the University’s business incubator. Of relevance to BIANCHO, Surrey has developed unique characterisation facilities and expertise for analysing photonic materials and the recombination processes occurring in lasers and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). They are utilising high pressure and low temperature techniques in BIANCHO to determine the electronic and optical properties of alloys incorporating bismuth and nitrogen. Surrey invented the IP underpinning BIANCHO and are leading the work package focused on device physics, working closely with the other partners, to determine the extent to which such alloys suppress Auger recombination and inter-valence band absorption in lasers, SOAs and LEDs and how they may be use to reduce the temperature dependence of the band gap in electro-absorption modulators. The results of this work assists in optimising photonic components for high efficiency and low temperature sensitivity.http://www.biancho.org/Partnerinfo1.html
About Philipps University Marburg (Germany)
The Central Technology Laboratory of the Materials Science Center (WZMW) of Philipps University Marburg (UNIMAR) is an interdisciplinary research centre founded in 1988. It encompasses groups from the departments of physics, chemistry and pharmacy and is engaged with research as well as with teaching in the respective departments. The central technology laboratory deals mainly with the growth and characterisation as well as processing of and the application of III-V semiconductor hetero-structures. Marburg lead the workpackage on material growth and characterization for the optimization of novel device structures in BIANCHO. They are using their extensive expertise in the metal organic vapour phase epitaxy growth of various III/V semiconductor materials using less-toxic group V precursor materials to contribute towards the success in component fabrication of this joint initiative. They also contribute their competence in quantitative structural characterization using X-ray and electron beams to characterize the novel materials, which are to be exploited for their specific unique properties in BIANCHO.
About CIP Technologies (United Kingdom)
CIP Technologies (CIP) is a leading supplier of advanced photonic components and services in the communications, industrial and defence markets. For nearly 30 years, CIP has been at the centre of the development of photonics under the prior ownership of BT and Corning. This experience is now being applied to the prototyping and supply of advanced products and research to the benefit of customers worldwide. Their facilities enable CIP to design, fabricate and assess state-of-the-art active III-V photonic devices, silicon micro-benches and silica on silicon motherboards. One of CIP’s key strengths is its ability and expertise to develop hybridly integrated products that utilise all of these key technologies. CIP are leading the fabrication work package in BIANCHO, developing fabrication processes for the new materials being grown by other partners in the project. They are designing and fabricating prototype laser, SOA and EAM devices using materials from SPI and Marburg. These are to be assessed from a telecom systems perspective by CIP, with more detailed characterisation carried out by Surrey. Results are fed back to the other partners for improvements in material and models. CIP are also leading the Dissemination and Exploitation work package in BIANCHO, bringing to bear its knowledge of the applications requirements for photonics components in the telecoms, datacoms and sensing industries.
About Semiconductor Physics Institute (SPI) – Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (Lithuania)
SPI is the largest research institute dealing with semiconductor technology, material and device investigations in Lithuania and in the Baltic countries, in general. SPI was founded in 1967 as a part of the Lithuanian Academy of Science. It was incorporated in 2010 into a newly created Physical and Technological Research Center covering a broad range of applied research in electronics, optoelectronics, and nanotechnology. SPI is represented in BIANCHO by the Optoelectronics Laboratory group. This group has extensive capabilities and experience in epitaxial technology and ultrafast material and device research; its facilities include two MBE machines and several experimental set-ups based on femtosecond laser sources. It has been participating in 6 European research projects and a major NATO “Science for Peace” project. In BIANCHO, SPI lead MBE growth of bismuth-containing epitaxial layers and their characterization by optical, electrical, and ultrafast techniques. They are also contributing to the design, manufacture, and characterization of devices based on these layers. They are responsible for developing ultrafast photodetector structures based on dilute bismides and are providing other partners with structures necessary for the diode laser and electro-optical modulator development.
