The issue of reducing power consumption in datacenters, and optical networks has become a huge topic of discussion at major optical communication conferences, and industry in general. High speed, low power modulators are seen to be an enabling technology that can help mitigate power consumption in transceivers, line cards, servers, and routers. Electro-optic polymer modulators are now poised to address power consumption with their inherent high speed and very low power properties. Electro-optic polymers are now additive with silicon foundries to integrated photonics platforms such as silicon photonics to increase performance significantly. The latest performance of polymer modulators is extremely exciting with 3dB bandwidths over 100GHz with very low voltages and extremely small footprints (ideal for pluggable transceivers). This talk will also review the latest work in photonics industry roadmaps on both the integrated photonics (PIC) level as well as PIC packaging level.
Presently, Michael is driving new frontiers in the integrated photonics field as: CEO and Board Director, Lightwave Logic Inc. Michael is also part-time full Professor and Chair of optoelectronics at Glyndwr University in Wales, UK where he contributes to the European Commission’s programs and pilot lines in integrated photonics. Michael has been involved in photonics for his whole career which began with research for the UK Government R&D labs in 1977, and continued at AT&T Bell Labs in 1984. At that time, Michael’s activities included researching novel optoelectronic devices in III-V compound semiconductors. Michael then went to Motorola’s Corporate R&D labs in 1989 and drove the VCSEL based technology platform to product and high volume manufacturing. He continued his fiber optics roles at AMP/TE Connectivity, and then helped initiate Intel’s silicon photonics work in 1999. In 2001, he founded his own company Ignis Optics to develop OC-48/192 transceivers and subsequently sold the company to Bookham (now Oclaro). Michael then led OIDA (Optoelectronics Industry Development Association) in Washington DC to campaign on behalf of the photonics industry. At OIDA Michael coined the term ‘green photonics’ and established this as discipline in the industry. Michael also spoke on Capitol Hill representing the optoelectronics industry. Since 2010, Michael has been focusing on bringing PIC (Photonic Integrated Circuit) based technologies to market in various roles that include Solar, LED lighting, and Integrated Photonics for fiber communications. Michael is pursuing high speed polymer based integrated photonics as part of a polymer PIC platform at Lightwave Logic Inc.