Light traveling along razor thin fiber optic cables routinely carries phone calls, Internet traffic, streaming video, and information stored in massive data centers at lightning speed across various distances—from thousands of miles to several meters. However, utilizing light to transmit information very short distances such as between/on semiconductor chips, has been limited by the lack of a circuit element that handles both light (photons) and electrons effectively.

In August, the National Science Foundation in conjunction with the Semiconductor Research Corporation awarded a team of engineering researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago $2.5 million to develop a chip-level photonic device technology for transporting and processing information at the chip level. The researchers, led by ECE Illinois Associate Professor John Dallesasse, will use the transistor laser as the building block for high-speed optical links and electronic-photonic digital logic circuits, enabling faster and more energy efficient chip-to-chip communications and signal/information processing.

Read full article here: Professor Dallesasse leads NSF E2CDA Center