Abstract: Increasing demand for faster information transport and data processing has driven a tremendous progress towards smaller, faster, and more efficient electronic devices in semiconductor industry over the past five decades. Continuously scaling down in semiconductor technology results in an inevitable challenge -- the on-chip interconnect becoming a bottleneck due to increased power dissipation and RC delay. Optical interconnects are superior to the electronic ones by virtue of their large operational bandwidth and low power dissipation. However, the dimensions of traditional optical devices are fundamentally limited by the law of diffraction. Plasmonics allows the manipulation of light at subwavelength scales, and could bridge the gap between the conventional optics and nanoelectronics. In this talk, after a brief introduction of research activities in Plasmonics Program in IHPC (e.g. imaging, sensing, photovoltaic and cosmetics), I will present the latest progress on plasmonics applications for optic data transmission in electronic integrated circuits. A novel hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) is designed and shows excellent tradeoff between the propagation loss and the power confinement. A waveguide platform based on the HPW is demonstrated with CMOS-compatible process, and used as a building block to build high-performance plasmonic devices, including bends, filters, splitters, and modulators. Plasmonic detectors based on antennas and resonant cavities will also be presented.

About Speaker: Dr Bai Ping is a Senior Scientist and Manager of Plasmonics Program at the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing. He has been with A*STAR since 1999, and his research interests cover nanoelectronics, nanophotonics and plasmonics. He pioneered plasmonics technology in Singapore with applying the technology in sensing, imaging, photovoltaic, personal care and optical data transmission on a chip. He has held an adjunct professor post in Nanyang Technology University since 2008. Dr Bai held 8 technical disclosures and patents, published more than 80 technical papers/chapters in international journals and books, and served a number of conference committees, including the most recent one – chairing a Symposium in ICMAT2013.