Dartmouth Events

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Meeting ID: 987 7101 0767
Passcode: 128109

In the 20th century, electronics was the dominant technology, enabled by optics and photonics. The 21st century will feature optics and photonics as the dominant technology, enabled by electronics. As an example, photonics will play a critical role towards a connected smart society, a society with the intensive co-evolution of virtual and physical, digital and analog, human and machine. The laser, in the 60 years since its invention, has been the critical engine in virtually every facet of modern life.  

In this talk, I will first present some recent advances in photonic crystal lasers, the third-generation semiconductor laser technology. The challenges in scaling towards watts level high power high beam quality lasers will be discussed. In the second part, I will introduce the micro transfer printing processes for heterogeneous integration of different thin film structures with applications in silicon photonics and flexible optoelectronics. Hybrid membrane lasers were developed for energy efficient on-chip integration, with potentials towards few photon attojoule operation. Optical sensors and bioresorbable optical elements were also developed for biomedical applications. The social impacts will also be discussed, for applications in sensing, communications, health, and sustainable smart society in the 21st century—the "Age of Light."