Planar Integration for Nonlinear Micro-Optics

A variety of useful optical and electro-optical elements are normally fabrication-incompatable in that they cannot be grown on the same substrate. The ability to integrate and interconnect incompatible nonlinear and linear devices would have considerable impact on a wide range of optical and optoelectronic applications. Planar micro-optics offers a unified medium provided active nonlinear semiconductor devices can be successfully integrated. Foster-Miller proposes an interdisciplinary concept combining the flexibility of alignable epitaxial lift-off (ELO) processes with the quasi 3-D Interconnectibility of quartz or sapphire based planar microoptics. The proposed program aims at integrating a number of thin film active devices including GaAs and InP bistable logic elements and switches, diffractive optical elements, and dynamic composite holograms - all currently under development at Foster-Miller - as well as commercially available devices such as semiconductor diode lasers, LEDs and detector arrays. Phase I will test the feasibility of the proposed unified detector device composed of a GaAs LED, two holographic interconnect gratings, mirror and GaAs detector on quartz substrate. Phase II research will demonstrate fully functional optical computing subsystems. Ultimate applications include optical memories, digital optics, optical interconnects, optical displays, and image processing computers.