1. The mature Si technology has significantly increased the functionalities of Si IC chips, leading to the huge demands of data transfer between IC chips. The conventional ways of data transfer through electronics cannot support the huge demands, so optical interconnect is proposed to provide solutions for huge amounts of data transfer. As a result, Si-based photonics become an important trend to push Si-technology toward more powerful IC chips. Different components like nano-structured waveguides, high-speed modulators, sensors and light emitting sources based on Si-technology will be explored in our Lab.
2. Organic and inorganic materials have different properties. However, as they are combined together, they may provide optoelectronics the advantages of both materials. The inorganic materials could give the advantage of easy processing/structure control, while the organic materials provide the flexibility on soft substrate. Our Lab will work on this combined system to explore the composite solar cells and light sources to exhibit the soft and flexible properties for various applications.