Graphene Photo Detectors Tested For Market Potential
Professor Max Lemme – head of the Chair of Electronic Devices at RWTH Aachen University and executive director of AMO GmbH – signed a Proof of Concept grant agreement for the Graphene IC project between AMO and the European Research Council (ERC).
ERC grants are considered the highest accolade in research on a European scale. ERC Proof of Concept grants provide additional funding for projects that have already been awarded an ERC grant. It should allow researchers to check the market potential of a product that has resulted from an ongoing or already concluded ERC project while they are planning the first steps to transfer it to technology. The grant therefore does not finance further research itself, but rather measures to aid the development and commercialization of the product.
In the Graphene IC project – funded by the Proof of Concept grant – researchers are testing the innovation potential of silicon-technology-integrated graphene photodetectors for high-speed and broadband light conversion. These photodetectors should act as an enabling technology for integrated optoelectronic systems with extremely high data rates. The product has the advantage of being able to outperform current systems when it comes to data rate, costs, and energy consumption. This project looks into the practicality of the product and identifies any technical issues that may occur.
The research work is based on Professor Lemme’s findings in the InteGraDe – Integrating Graphene Devices (307311) project, which was funded by an ERC Starting Grant. In this project, Lemme demonstrated the integration of graphene with silicon technology up to the wafer scale.
Editorial by: Press and Communications