Light: the essential ingredient for future technology
Today’s data traffic has reached its limits. The microelectronics we use to process data lacks the efficiency we need to meet our ever increasing demands on bandwidth and speed. And datacenters around the world already use up more than three percent of all the electricity we generate. Without any mitigating measures, this energy consumption will rise to double-figure percentages of global power consumption.
Photonics – the technology that uses light instead of electrons to carry information – not only has a much higher processing speed than microelectronics, it also consumes considerably less energy per processed bit of information. However, ongoing innovation is necessary to sustainably support increasing demand in areas such as internet bandwidth, connectivity and computational power for business, entertainment, health, mobility, sustainable energy supply, air and drinking water quality, sustainable agriculture, safety and communications.
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Related research groups
The six TU/e groups working on Integrated Photonics together cover three fields:
- Photonic materials and devices
- Photonic integrated circuits
- Photonic systems