Developing emerging semiconductors to revolutionize photonics

Our research covers a whole chain from material, through devices to integrated circuits with various applications in lighting, communication, energy harvest and sensing. Currently, our main focus is on GaN and SiC nanomaterial and nanodevices, and LN nanodevices.

Energy efficiency plays a crucial role to mitigate the global warming effect. The emerging wide bandgap semiconductors have already contributed to it in electronics field. It is believed that they could have more impact in photonics as well, benefitting from the well developed material and industrially mature processing. A good example is the energy-efficient GaN based white LED light source. It is expected that SiC will revolutize the photonics integrated circuits after its unique photonic properties are unlocked by the nanofabrication.    

Because of the nature of fundamental research, we contribute to the society in multi-dimensions. More energy-efficient devices address UN Sustainable Development Goals #13 (Climate Action). Higher power UV LEDs address UN Sustainable Development Goals #6 (Clean water and sanitation). Implantable  biosensors address UN Sustainable Development Goals #3 (Good Health and Well-being), and higher capacity and more secure communication address UN Sustainable Development Goals # 4 (Quality Education).

We are, for example, the world pioneer and leader in SiC based photonics and have built up a number of interdisciplinary research environments where we, for example, research into on-chip SiC optical frequency comb to achieve data traffic handling beyond 100Tb/s.