Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The demand for the rapid and secure transfer of information and for increasingly complex computational power continues to grow as society's reliance on technology increases. To develop multi-functional systems to meet these pressing demands, researchers are pursuing the creation of energy-efficient compact photonic and optoelectronic devices governed by novel physical processes in materials and nanostructures. Through the proposed program, we will engineer exciton-polaritonic devices as a scalable solid-state photonic platform. Exciton-polaritons have a dual light-matter nature, resulting from their strongly coupled cavity photons and quantum-well excitons. The matter portion bestows strong nonlinearity and spontaneous coherence arising from particle-particle interactions, and the wave portion bestows ultrafast propagation arising from its extremely light mass. These properties enable us to build ultralow power light sources and optical logic devices, with a predicted 10-100 fold power gain compared to traditional devices. The innate planar structure supports integration of other components for scalability.We aim to develop room-temperature (RT) exciton-polaritonics that offer low power consumption, small physical footprint, pristine single-mode quality and increased output power; inherent features that arise from the quantum Bose nature. RT operation eliminates the need for expensive cryogenic equipment, low power operation is required for building extremely dense integrated systems, and increased output power enables cascade and parallel processes for reaching expanded levels of computational complexity. Our approach will be to investigate transition-metal dichalcogenides as a new material candidate for RT operation because excitons in this class are stable against RT thermal energy due to a huge exciton-binding energy. We will design and fabricate suitable microcavities, in which these new materials will be embedded to form stable RT exciton-polaritons.The successful demonstration of these devices, realized through this program, will advance progress in optical communication and data storage, optoelectronics, and integrated photonic circuits with polariton-based light emitting sources, switching transistors, and sensors. Our devices will also serve as a testbed to study exotic quantum phases such as Bose-Einstein condensation, superfluidity and vortex formation at RT. Engineering and explorative aspects of the proposed research will furnish an exceptional educational platform, through which HQP will internalize comprehensive understanding of fundamental physics and acquire state-of-the-art optical and electrical techniques. This will leave them well equipped to excel as leaders in sectors that will become increasingly important to Canada's economy, such as quantum optical computation and communications.