Energy-efficient data centers and high-performance computing enabled by on-chip printed microelectronic optical component and circuit manufacturing

From an energy perspective, the data center market already accounts for ~2% of global emissions and 10% of electricity consumption. The rise of high-performance computing (HPC) and AI model development present even more growth and energy pressure on the industry. Current data center networks rely on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for high-performance, low-cost components to drive cloud infrastructure with bandwidths exceeding current 100 Gb/s standards, with 400 Gb/s coming online. The actual market revenue for photonic chip products today is valued at over $4 billion and growing at 25% annually to keep up with this demand. Looking forward, photonic chips are required to advance network bandwidths into the terabit-per-second (Tb/s = 1000 Gb/s) level while simultaneously reducing the energy per bit of data transmission. One key limitation to the ecosystem is the use of off-chip lasers, which both reduces functionality and design capability at the chip level, as well as adds packaging, cost, and supply chain complexity on the economic side. While there has been immense progress in PIC technology development, the search for on-chip laser sources continues despite decades of research. To overcome the Ĺsilicon laser problemĺ, Iris Light Technologies is developing a new class of wafer-scale manufacturing of on-chip lasers based on printed photonic ink gain material. These new on-chip lasers will not only drastically reduce the size of circuits, but also enable higher-bandwidth network interconnections between compute and memory nodes as required by new energy-efficient disaggregated network architectures coming online. Here we propose a novel approach based on printed electronics to achieve integration of optoelectronic nanomaterials onto silicon wafers for volume manufacturing of photonic chips (e.g., silicon photonics, or photonic integrated circuits). In Phase I, Iris Light Technologies and Argonne National Laboratory demonstrated printed semiconductor inks and on-chip printed photodetectors, highlighting the ability to create opto-electronically active devices. Phase I focused on advancing the ink itself and resulted in a 4x increase in ink conductivity (well beyond the 20% improvement performance target), high inter- batch repeatability, and developing a new process to isolate 3-layer BP flakes that emit at the target wavelength of 1310 nm. This Phase II will take the improved inks, optimize the process for manufacturing these materials, and make long-lasting, passivated, laser products that emit at 1310 nm, the most commonly used optical wavelength in data center communications. During Phase II, we will develop and demonstrate novel foundry-compatible printed semiconductors and optoelectronic device manufacturing approaches to enable Terabit-per-second connectivity in emerging disaggregated networks, with reduced energy and environmental impacts for digital infrastructure. Summary for Members of Congress: Data centers and transmission networks today account for 2.7% of global electricity use and 2% of global CO2 emissions, which is still rapidly growing. This project demonstrates novel foundry-compatible printed semiconductors and optoelectronic device manufacturing approaches to enable Terabit-per-second connectivity in emerging disaggregated networks to reduce energy and environmental impacts.