We are living in an increasingly digitalised world where data has become critical to all aspects of human life. Today's data centres are consuming about 3 percent of the global electricity supply and this number is likely to triple in the next decade. Remarkably, more than 50% of the power consumption in high-performance computing and data centres is associated with moving information around, rather than processing it. The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of healthcare monitoring and remote working using high speed broadband connections. Optical communications is essential to accommodate the need for high speed and bandwidth, while at the same time reducing the power required. In the meantime, 3D imaging and sensing is pushing the next revolution in consumer electronics by facilitating artificial intelligence (AI)-powered devices. LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, is one of the key technologies enabling this market growth with anticipated market share reaching $6 billion by 2024, 70% of which dedicated to automotive applications. From telecommunications to sensing applications, photons have proven to be the most efficient platform. As optical communication is penetrating to shorter and shorter distances and the 3D imaging and sensing expanding across the consumer, automotive, medical and industry/commercial sectors, the photonics manufacturing industry is on the verge of technological advancements. However, high cost, low volume capacity and limited scalability of the photon-based platform has become the bottleneck hindering cutting-edge technologies entering mass production. In this regard, integrating bulky, expensive optical components (the lasers, modulators, amplifiers, detectors and lenses) onto a much affordable and scalable platform like silicon is being much sought after by major industry and academic groups. Over the last six decades, silicon has driven the production of new technologies based on electrons at ever astounding volumes. Looking ahead, the silicon platform can be leveraged as a means to overcome the scalability, manufacturing and system architecture challenges experienced by photonics industry, impacting a range of emerging markets where small form factor, low-cost manufacturing and power efficiency are figures of merit. In this project, we aim to integrate high-performance lasers and amplifiers operating at the strategically important C-band at 1550 nm onto the scalable silicon platform. These devices are one of the most critical components enabling long-haul optical fibre communications, inter-data centre optical interconnect and emerging 3D imaging and sensing technologies including eye-safe LiDAR chips. Leveraging the complementary growth techniques of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD), we will incorporate manufacturable nanostructures as the gain medium to realise advanced devices surpassing state-of-the-art. Several routes will be explored to overcome the challenges in growing these materials and devices onto silicon towards fully integrated photonic platforms, opening up the opportunity for low cost and high volume mass production.

The sensing, processing and transport of information is at the heart of modern life, as can be seen from the ubiquity of smart-phone usage on any street. From our interactions with the people who design, build and use the systems that make this possible, we have created a programme to make possible the first data interconnects, switches and sensors that use lasers monolithically integrated on silicon, offering the potential to transform Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by changing fundamentally the way in which data is sensed, transferred between and processed on silicon chips. The work builds on our demonstration of the first successful telecommunications wavelength lasers directly integrated on silicon substrates. The QUDOS Programme will enable the monolithic integration of all required optical functions on silicon and will have a similar transformative effect on ICT to that which the creation of silicon integrated electronic circuits had on electronics. This will come about through removing the need to assemble individual components, enabling vastly increased scale and functionality at greatly reduced cost.

Southampton and Glasgow Universities currently contribute to a project entitled CORNERSTONE which has established a new Silicon Photonics fabrication capability, based on the Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) platform, for academic researchers in the UK. The project is due to end in December 2019, after which time the CORNERSTONE fabrication capability will be self-sustaining, with users paying for the service. Based upon demand from the UK's premier photonics researchers, this proposal seeks funding to extend the capability that is offered to UK researchers beyond the current SOI platforms, to include emerging Silicon Photonics platforms, together with capabilities facilitating integration of photonic circuits with electronics, lasers and detectors. These emerging platforms enable a multitude of new applications that have emerged over the past several years, some of which are not suitable for the SOI platform, and some of which complement the SOI platform by serving applications at other wavelengths. Southampton, and Glasgow universities will work together to bring the new platforms to a state of readiness to deliver the new functionality via a multi-project-wafer (MPW) mechanism to satisfy significantly increasing demand, and deliver them to UK academic users free of charge (to the user) for the final six months of the project, in order to establish credibility. This will encourage wider usage of world class equipment within the UK, in line with EPSRC policy. We seek funding for 3 PDRAs and 2 technicians across the 2 institutions, over a 2 year period, to facilitate access to a very significant inventory of equipment at these 2 universities, including access to UK's only deep-UV projection lithography capability. During this 2 year period, we will canvas UK demand for the capability to continue to operate as an EPSRC National Research Facility, and if so, to establish a statement of need. We currently have 50 partners/users providing in-kind support to a value of to £1,705,000 and cash to the value of £173,450.