MIT scientists crack the code for flexible wafer-scale photonics
MIT scientists have developed a flexible, transparent silicon-photonic platform that can withstand thousands of bends without losing performance. This innovation could revolutionize the design of wearables and data center racks by allowing for wafer-scale photonic integration.
Why it matters
This breakthrough addresses a major scalability bottleneck in photonics, potentially enabling more durable and compact high-speed computing hardware.
Bendy bonding process could transform wearables … and data center rack designs
Scientists at MIT have developed the means to produce flexible and transparent chips to bring silicon photonics to wafer-scale.
Conventional silicon photonic development has so far been limited to fabrication processes on the individual device or at chip scale, thereby limiting potential scalability. Detailed in the journal Optica , the research team sought to overcome this through optically transparent and mechanically flexible silicon photonics wafers.
The scientists managed to develop a 300-millimeter silicon-photonic platform both entirely transparent and capable of withstanding “thousands of bends” without optical performance degradation.
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