Silicon Photonics in the Spotlight
German-Chinese Symposium at RWTH Aachen University
Upon invitation by the Institute of Integrated Photonics at RWTH Aachen University, 48 internationally recognized researchers from Germany and China as well as invited speakers from the USA and Switzerland came to Aachen to participate in the "10th Joint Sino-German Symposium on Opto- and Microelectronic Devices and Systems” (SODC 2018). Among the attendees were also delegates from tier-one industrial leaders as well as small to medium enterprises from the region.
Under the headline of Silicon Photonics, the symposium was specially dedicated to the implementation of optical devices in silicon chips for communications and sensing applications, as well as the convergence of microelectronic and optical components on silicon.
Silicon Photonics enables the cost-effective mass manufacturing of optical components on the chip scale with the same manufacturing infrastructure as microelectronics and is one of the emerging disruptive technologies in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
The Institute of Integrated Photonics, which hosted the symposium, combines a team of junior and senior scientists bridging the gap between novel materials and application-specific Photonic Integrated Circuits, so-called “Photonic ICs," and is led by Professor Jeremy Witzens.
The SODC takes place every two years in alternating locations and Germany and China and is co-funded by the Sino-German Center for Research Promotion, a joint center of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).