Jan is in the last semester of his Bachelors degree in electrical engineering and information technology at ETH Zurich. He has also work at Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) for quite some time now, which allowed him to gain multiple years of work experience in the field of lab automation. He loves playing basketball and video games and he is always in the mood for card games (especially Tichu!)
Alyssa joined Polariton Technologies in November 2022. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Southampton, UK and her Master’s degree in Micro- and Nanosystems from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
She has experience working in both R&D and production cleanrooms, as well in technology transfer of semiconductor devices from R&D to production. Previously, she was working as a process engineer in a high voltage semiconductor production line at Hitachi Energy.
Outside of work, she likes cooking and do culinary travels, as well as going to music concerts and festivals.
Neil joined Polariton in October 2022 as a Process Engineer for Organic Electro-Optic Materials. Neil earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Columbia University where he specialized in determining the structure-function relationships of organic chromophores for device applications such as field-effect transistors, solar cells, and light-emitting diodes. At Polariton, Neil’s objectives are to combine his expertise in chemistry, materials science, and device fabrication to design organic materials with optimal properties for electro-optic modulators and to implement processes for maximal material performance reliability.
Neil earned his B.S. in his home state at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point where he double-majored in Chemistry and Geoscience. Neil’s interests vary widely in both his professional and private life; outside of work, Neil enjoys activities such as hiking, cooking, eating great food, snowboarding, yoga, and traveling. On occasion, Neil also enjoys live music, the performing arts, and comedy.
Preksha joined Polariton Technologies in August 2022 as an R&D Engineer. She received her M.Sc. degree in Interdisciplinary Sciences with specialization in Physics and Materials Science in 2018 from ETH Zurich. She completed her Ph.D. at IBM Research Europe – Zurich and ETH Zurich in 2021, where she worked on group III-V compound semiconductors integrated on silicon for active photonics. In particular, she fabricated and characterized micro- and nanolasers and high-speed photodetectors for optical communication.
At Polariton she is part of the nanofabrication team which develops scalable processes for plasmonic and photonic structures in high-performance integrated optical devices.
Outside the lab, she likes bicycling, being outside, good food, and stepping out of her comfort zone from time to time.
Sónia joined Polariton Technologies in August 2022 as a Production Technician. Born in Portugal, she received a Bachelor`s degree in Chemistry from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto in 2014.
With over 5 years of experience obtained from applying her knowledge working in the ceramic and textile industries, she believes her specific background and education can bring a different approach to the company’s challenges.
Outside of working her hobbies are hiking, playing team sports, reading and hanging out with her friends, especially in the lake.
Giovanni Lillo joined Polariton in August 2022.
He had his first encounter with nano- and microtechnology in 1998 at an IBM start-up company. Since then, he has gained experience in the fabrication of microchips in silicon as well as InP, GaAs and InGaAs.
Giovanni is an expert in the fabrication of sensors as well as photonics and laser components.
Roger Dangel, PhD. Joined Polariton Technologies in July 2022 as Senior R&D Process Engineer focusing on research, development, production, and integration of Polariton’s plasmonic modulators. From 2000 to 2016, as part of IBM’s Photonics Group his main focus was the development of a versatile single-mode and multi-mode optical polymer waveguide technology to be used for electro-optical printed circuit boards in high-performance computers and silicon photonics packaging and integration in data centers. Over the years, Roger is author or co-author of more than 80 scientific publications and 20 filed patents; a large fraction was licensed to business partners as part of technology transfer agreements.
Yannik Horst, Tobias Blatter, Laurenz Kulmer, Bertold Ian Bitachon, Benedikt Baeuerle,
Marcel Destraz, Wolfgang Heni, Stefan Koepfli, Patrick Habegger, Marco Eppenberger, Eva De Leo,
Claudia Hoessbacher, Delwin L. Elder, Scott R. Hammond, Lewis E. Johnson,
Larry R. Dalton, Senior Member, IEEE, Yuriy Fedoryshyn, Yannick Salamin,
Maurizio Burla, Senior Member, IEEE, and Juerg Leuthold, Fellow, IEEE25, 1762-1768 (2017)
Abstract
A transparent Optical-subTHz-Optical link providing record-high single line rates of 240 Gbit/s and 192 Gbit/s on a single optical carrier over distances from 5 to 115 m is demonstrated. Besides a direct mapping of the optical to a 230 GHz subTHz-carrier frequency by means of a uni-traveling carrier (UTC) photodiode, we demonstrate direct conversion of data from the subTHz domain back to the optical domain by a plasmonic modulator. It is shown that the subTHz-to-optical upconversion can even be performed at good quality without any electrical amplifiers. Finally, at the receiver, the local oscillator is employed to directly map the optical signal back to the electrical baseband within a coherent receiver.
Fig. 1. (a) Vision of future communication networks, where THz links are transparently embedded in the fiber-optical network for backhauling and device-todevice applications.
Transparent Optical-THz-Optical Link at 240/192 Gbit/s over 5/115 m Enabled by Plasmonics
Daniel is currently pursuing his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at ETH Zurich, after completing his B.Sc. in the same field. He joined Polariton as an intern in the ‘Device Simulation and Design’ department due to the potential he saw in the company, the interdisciplinary nature of the field and his fascination with Optics. In his free time, he enjoys playing tennis, doing fitness and rowing. He relishes Persian, Spanish and German cuisine. And his favourite colour is wine red.
Xu, Huajun, et al. “Design and synthesis of chromophores with enhanced electro-optic activities in both bulk and plasmonic–organic hybrid devices.” Materials Horizons (2022).
Abstract:
This study demonstrates enhancement of in-device electro-optic activity via a series of theory-inspired organic electro-optic (OEO) chromophores based on strong (diarylamino)phenyl electron donating moieties. These chromophores are tuned to minimize trade-offs between molecular hyperpolarizability and optical loss. Hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) measurements demonstrate that these chromophores, herein described as BAH, show >2-fold improvement in β versus standard chromophores such as JRD1, and approach that of the recent BTP and BAY chromophore families. Electric field poled bulk devices of neat and binary BAH chromophores exhibited significantly enhanced EO coefficients (r33) and poling efficiencies (r33/Ep) compared with state-of-the-art chromophores such as JRD1. The neat BAH13 devices with charge blocking layers produced very large poling efficiencies of 11.6 ± 0.7 nm2 V−2 and maximum r33 value of 1100 ± 100 pm V−1 at 1310 nm on hafnium dioxide (HfO2).
These results were comparable to that of our recently reported BAY1 but with much lower loss (extinction coefficient, k), and greatly exceeding that of other previously reported OEO compounds. 3 : 1 BAH-FD : BAH13 blends showed a poling efficiency of 6.7 ± 0.3 nm2 V−2 and an even greater reduction in k. 1 : 1 BAH-BB : BAH13 showed a higher poling efficiency of 8.4 ± 0.3 nm2 V−2, which is approximately a 2.5-fold enhancement in poling efficiency vs. JRD1. Neat BAH13 was evaluated in plasmonic–organic hybrid (POH) Mach–Zehnder modulators with a phase shifter length of 10 μm and slot widths of 80 and 105 nm. In-device BAH13 achieved a maximum r33 of 208 pm V−1 at 1550 nm, which is ∼1.7 times higher than JRD1 under equivalent conditions.