More than three decades ago, when silicon carbide was discovered to display the ‘Pockels effect’. This is a polarization technique used in electrical engineering that is believed to have the potential to make electronics smaller and faster. Now, scientists from the University of Sydney and Harvard University have found a way to harness that potential of silicon carbide to create a new generation of photoelectric modulators.
Silicon carbide is very hard and very strong, but difficult to machine. Image credit: Beeblaine qua Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)
Back then silicon carbide was described as a photonic wonder material, but existing techniques for working with it and actually using it in electronics were very limited. For decades, however, scientists remained confident that silicon carbide could unlock the next generation of system-on-chip components. The researchers now understand that the material could be useful in traditional electronic devices as well as quantum emitters. In fact, silicon carbide could be crucial to the future of quantum computers.
An international collaboration has now seen silicon carbide fabricated into an electro-optical modulator that is very powerful, very compact and, potentially, very fast. Simply put, an electro-optical modulator encodes an electrical signal into an optical signal. Because light travels so quickly and so efficiently, these types of devices are critical to the operation of global data centers and communications systems. However, this new silicon carbide photoelectric modulator uses the Pockels effect and offers many advantages.
First of all, silicon carbide photoelectric modulators can be made relatively cheaply. This is quite interesting, because for decades silicon carbide was considered very difficult to work with, but now scientists seem to have overcome that obstacle. They also exhibit low loss, broadband and ultrafast data transmission. Silicon carbide photoelectric modulators can make very compact transmitters for signal processing, microwave optics, chip-to-chip, or intra-chip interconnection.
Professor Marko Loncar, who led the research from Harvard University, said: “Silicone carbide modulators will likely find applications in quantum communications. They can, for example, be used to control the temporal and spectral properties of the quantum emitters that exist in this material, as well as to route photons in a reconfigurable fashion.”
This may seem like a long way off, but scientists believe that technologies like silicon carbide photoelectric modulators could one day make their way into our everyday electronics as well. Especially if they are as cost-effective and compact as they are now. In the lab, these devices have demonstrated high optical strength, enabling high optical signal-to-noise ratios for modern communications in data centers, 6G and satellites, and quantum internet in future.
The source: University of Sydney
