Multipurpose programmable optical chips

Researchers have designed multipurpose programmable optical chips that could revolutionise the microwave photonics industry.

Optical chips or processors are used in everything, from biomedical devices to telecommunications networks. As it stands, each chip has to be custom designed and manufactured for each new task, which keeps productions costs high and the sector fragmented. Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) researchers have designed a generic optical chip that can be programmed on demand to carry out any number of functions (currently at laboratory scale only).

The researchers first proposed the concept of an all-purpose optical processor three years ago. Today, the team led by Professor José Capmany at the UPV’s Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM) are in the process of defining a starter chip that can be programmed to offer two functions — filter and instant frequency measurement. The chips are manufactured from indium phosphide. The researchers expect to be designing chips that incorporate between five and six functionalities by the end of the year.

“This the first step towards a complete overhaul of the telecommunications sector. The programmable optical chip, once available on the market, will trigger an exponential drop in chip manufacturing costs. In the not-too-distant future, we will have generic optical processors with a standard configuration and universal core which will be programmable on demand. Manufacturing processes will be unified — whatever they are used for, the chip will be manufactured in the same way — which will lead to massive savings across the board,” said Capmany.

“Let’s imagine, for instance, that I want to manufacture three types of circuits: one that takes a delay line, another to generate signals and a third to filter. Until now we needed to manufacture three different types of chips. Now we can use the same hardware platform for all three functions.”

The study’s findings have been published in Nature Photonics.