New way to steer light for Lidars and free-space communication

Optical phased arrays can be used to harness light to enable self-driving cars or better connect our country via communications satellites.

They are tiny devices on silicon chips the size of a fingernail that emit and control a light beam.

Photonics experts Dr. Jianhao Zhang, and his colleagues Dr. Pavel Cheben, Dr. Jens Schmid and Dr. Dan-Xia Xu from the Nanophotonics in the Quantum and Nanotechnologies Research Centre invented a particular way of designing optical phase arrays.

It is well-established in the field of radar and optical phased arrays that packing optical antennas closely, with distances less than the wavelength of light, in a two-dimensional mesh is the ideal way to yield a single and flexible optical beam.

This, however, is beyond the current technological limits in integrated photonics as the light waveguides and phase shifters must be placed within the array area, which increases the spacing of the antennas. The team's new invention overcomes that issue by devising a new design methodology that makes it possible to achieve efficient single beam emission from a two-dimensional arrangement of the antennas with larger spacing.

"I like the challenges in fundamental research and pushing the boundaries of current practices. Often, we need to return to the fundamentals for advancing a technology, and this is what I believe the NRC is renowned for," Dr. Zhang said.

Currently the team is working on the device characterization to in the near future produce a prototype of the invention.

Partly funded via the High-throughput and Secure Networks Challenge program, the team's invention is currently undergoing Intellectual Property review.