Can you briefly explain what you are researching?
We work on combining different semiconductor materials, and those materials have different functionalities. Silicon, for example, is the material used to make electronics - it’s great for this. It has the right properties and is non-toxic and cheap, but there are some things you cannot do with silicon. For example, you cannot emit light using silicon, because silicon has an indirect band gap. So you have to use something else – this is where the materials we make come into play.
In these materials we combine two atoms; one from group 3 (III) in the periodic table, and one from group 5 (V), and then you can actually mix and match – this is called a compound. You can tune the properties of the material to whatever you need - for example to make a laser.
The goal of our research is to put the two together so that you have an electronic chip, on top of which you can place an III-V material to make a laser or a detector.
What can your research be used for?
Definitely optical communication, because if you look at a computer or a smartphone today, the signals are sent electronically on a chip, from one transistor to the other. However, if you look at it from a larger perspective – if you stream something from netflix, for example, then the data is typically sent with optical signals to and from a data centre somewhere, even the data internally in the data centre is sent optically. Because photons simply have much greater bandwidth, do it faster and are more energy efficient than exclusively electronic systems.
Right now there is a lot of research into bringing photonic technology onto the chip as well – simply to push the boundaries of when it pays to use photons instead of electrons.
How did you become interested in dealing with this?
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would be doing what I am doing today. I thought I was supposed to study French Linguistics or something.
When I was young I worked in Africa and wanted to do projects there within solar cell research. So I studied energy engineering at DTU. It was okay, but I figured out that this wasn’t quite where my passion was.
Then I took a course at DTU about solid-state physics, and it was simply love at first sight. I had a genuine eureka moment and knew that this was what I wanted to do.
What do you think the future holds for you?
Something we have actually started to look at is sustainability. We do a lot of nanofabrication, and we are trying to figure out how we can optimise processes, whether we can do more analytics to become more sustainable, emitting less toxic gases for example. And it might not be the most groundbreaking research, but it's actually something that I find important. Many of the big names in the industry are also starting to look into it, because you cannot ignore the footprint of the microelectronics industry.
And of course I also work with materials. The materials are used for many different things, such as optical communication, which is of course something my scientific future will be characterised by, but the materials are also increasingly used for quantum computing and sensing, so this is definitely a field I am moving towards as well.
We know why we have appointed you, but why did you say yes?
Because I come from DTU.
I was really happy to study at DTU, I truly think it is one of the best universities. And the reason why I left Denmark at the time was that at that time there was not that much research within semiconductor technology. I think this has changed since then – there has been more research of that type also within nanotechnology. And I am certainly interested in having a collaboration with Denmark, because I also think there are many parallels. Switzerland is also a small country that thrives on high technology, and we can do some great things together. This collaboration can also provide opportunities for students who can move one way or the other – I would like to create some opportunities for that.
Where do you think the field will be in 20 years?
I actually think we’re at an immensely exciting point in time right now.
If we look at electronics right now, for several decades it has just been about scaling – making things exceedingly smaller – and I think there are much greater opportunities to use different materials and processes right now with all the different applications.
Just 10 years ago, much of what we are doing right now was not realistic at all.
It has never been more exciting to do research in this area because there is room for all of us.
But to look ahead, one of the things that are exciting right now is clearly AI technology, and I definitely think that everything will become more intelligent and smart. I think this is where the general public will see the development. Actually, we can see it already. Things like ChatGPT are mostly just toys, but I think the moment you apply AI in fabrication and processing, I really think it's going to create a lot of new opportunities. If we consider technologies, we’re not "just" going to be doing nanotechnology or computer science, these things are going to be much more intertwined and working together.
