Gips-Schüle Research Award for Ultracompact Photodetector

We congratulate our customers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) for receiving the Gips-Schüle Research Award for the World’s Smallest Photodetector!  

Sascha Mühlbrandt, Christian Koos, and Manfred Kohl of KIT’s Institute of Microtechnology (IMT) / Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics (IPQ) were honored for their work on plasmonic photodetectors which combine an ultra-compact footprint with electro-optical bandwidths of hundreds of GHz. The novel photodetector is a hundred times smaller and much faster than conventional detectors. More detailed information can be found in the paper “Silicon-plasmonic internal-photoemission detector for 40  Gbit/s data reception,” which was published in Optica and can be found here: http://ow.ly/NRAn30hYlSl  

Photograph of the winners of the Gips-Schüle-Award
Award of the Gips-Schüle-Stiftung 2017 on November 28.2017 in Stuttgart; Photo: Thomas Niedermüller / Gips-Schüle-Stiftung

There is also a YouTube video available (German only), which describes the work being done at KIT. Watch it here:

At IMT, the record-breaking ultracompact devices can be fabricated within a week thanks to the EBPG5200. Nowadays their architecture can even be expanded from three to four layers, which is only possible due to the high overlay accuracy of the patterning system. We are excited for our customers and eager to see where their research will lead in the future.