Our world is globally connected: Today, millions of silicon photonic chips perform the work of transmitting data around the world. Those chips use advanced photonic integrated circuits to connect electrical signals used for computation with optical signals used for communication. Achieving better performance in electro-optical links is today’s challenge in the field of communication, and it is strongly limited by the performance of available materials.

At Lumiphase, we developed a photonics technology around a new material system, barium titanate, that boosts the performance of today’s silicon photonic technology. By introducing the Pockels effect into a semiconductor platform, we provide a new solution to perform electro-optical switching with great benefits in cost, speed, power-consumption, and footprint compared to standard silicon solutions. Our products use the most efficient Pockels material known today embedded in silicon photonic circuits. During the presentation, I will cover Lumiphase’s Pockels technology, how we set it up in a Swiss startup, and how it impacts advanced photonic circuits and chips.

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Bio

Dr. Stefan Abel is Co-founder and Co-CEO of Lumiphase AG and driving the development and commercialization of Lumiphase’s innovative Pockels switching technology. Previously, Stefan spent more than 10 years at IBM where he invented new optical phase shifters based on ultra-efficient electro-optical materials for applications in optical communication, novel photonic computing, and sensing with light.