Public Funding for Chromosol Limited

Nokia reported a 30% growth in network traffic within weeks of Covid-19 restrictions being implemented, a value normally typical of annual growth rates. Whilst UK operators have coped with this initial surge in demand, post-covid whole communities will move to new digital ways of working and living, leading to new patterns of demand and behaviour. This represents a stark challenge to UK digital infrastructure in terms of elevated demand and uncertainty around patterns of use. In order to support the UK's post-Covid recovery as well as accelerate the ongoing digital transformation being driven by the introduction of 5G networks, the UK's digital infrastructure will need to accommodate scale as well as become more flexible and responsive to user behaviour. Specifically there is a critical need for higher data transfer rates and lower latency. This requirement translates directly into the need for improved transceiver technologies both in the datacentre environment and for the fronthaul in 5G networks. In the datacentre the requirement for low cost, low power, small form factor and high performance photonics to serve the pre-covid data transfer needs has already necessitated the deployment of advanced Silicon Photonics technologies. This has enabled many of the optical components required in transceivers to be integrated into silicon. However, current silicon photonics is missing a key ingredient - light generation and amplification. Currently laser sources and optical amplifiers are fabricated in different compound semiconductor material systems and then co-packaged with the silicon photonics. Integrated Silicon-based lasers and amplifiers are therefore a holy grail in the industry with the promise of lower fabrication costs combined with significant reduction in power requirement and increases in efficiency. Chromosol, a spin-out from QMUL, has developed a technology based on a 2-component optical gain and sensitizer system which can be co-evaporated on top of a silicon-based waveguide that produces an integrated optical gain of 5dB/cm. This project will focus on developing the Chromosol technology to take fully integrated silicon photonics into the marketplace and has three components: 1. Integrated Lasing. Having already demonstrated integrated silicon gain, the next step is to demonstrate integrated silicon lasing. This will require in-house photonics design and the outsourced production of the base silicon photonic chips. The Chromosol organic materials will be deposited on the photonic chips to demonstrate lasing and amplified optical signals of \>0 dBm (1mW). 2. Enhancing Lifetime. The OLED industry has used inorganic Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) to successfully extended the lifetime of their materials to over 50000 hours. The ALD process will be will be used to experiment with different deposition conditions and characterise the performance of the layers both directly through lifetime, but also using standard diagnostic equipment with the aim of enhancing lifetime by an order of magnitude. 3. Enhancement Efficiency. The current materials achieve record breaking efficiencies, however, engineering the gain molecule will improve significantly the efficiency and therefore the overall quantum efficiency of our lasers and amplifiers.

Optical communication is the future of high speed data networks. Although virtually all long distance data transfer is sent at the speed of light down optical fibres, the technology required to do this is too expensive for shorter distance links. As such datacentres, which currently consume about 3% of the world's electricity generation and are responsible for around 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions, are forced to rely on electrical connections for short range data transfer, an energy intensive process which also provides a bottleneck in the data transfer rate. This project aims to further develop a new range of laser materials derived from novel chemistry which can be deposited directly onto silicon chips in order to allow the integration of lasers. This will overcome the bottleneck in data communications and facilitate ultra-high speed communications right down to the chip level, a fundamental aim of those in the silicon photonics field which is seen as the underpinning technology for next generation computing. The project brings together a new spin-out company with Queen Mary University of London and IP Group, an early stage technology development company. We will support Chromosol to produce, test and characterise these new and novel laser materials and use them to fabricate devices demonstrating the commercial viability of the approach.