1. Nanotechnology:Nanophotonics
Optical Obstacle Course!
Prof. Dan Wasserman
Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.
Micro and Nanotechnology Lab

2. Nanotechnology: Why Do We Care?
Health and Medicine
Electronics
Nanotechnology
Communication
Consumer Products

3. What is Communication?
The transmission of information/data from “sender” to “receiver”

4. What About Information?
How much information is stored in servers by Youtube, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Yahoo, Facebook, etc?
Youtube: 100 hours of video uploaded every minute
Facebook: 1.19 billion monthly active users, all uploading pictures of cats, and other important stuff.
Google owns ~2% of world’s servers, probably over 1,000,000 servers
As we develop faster methods to generate more data: higher quality cameras/video, portable sensors, etc., the amount of data generated will only grow exponentially
In 2011, over 1.8 Zettabytes was created
1ZB=1,800,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
1ZB~18,000,000,000=18 billion hard-drives worth of data!
All of this data requires faster/smaller processors, faster communication networks and…

5. Building a Communication System
…the ability to move data from place to place!!
Communication!
Why Communication?
Communication is important
Science & Technology
Business
Arts & Literature
Understand the world around us
Programming
Optics/Lasers
Circuits
Materials Science
Cryptography
Fun!

6. What makes a good communication system?
Speed
Reliability
Security
Capacity
Reach
Cost
Ease of operation
Portability
Coverage
Size

7. What goes into a communication system?
Source
Detector
Medium
Language/Code

8. Why nano?
Typically we think of communication systems as taking data over miles and miles…
We use light for this because optical fibers can carry light for long distances without loss
And because light is fast!!
But what about short distances?

9. Transporting Information
If we are transmitting information with light, we need waveguides
Typically, we use waveguides made from glass: optical fibers
Optical properties of a material can be summed up in n, the refractive index
Glass
Refraction
Refraction
Refraction
Total Internal Reflection
Reflection
Reflection
Reflection
Reflection

10. Refraction
How do we use refraction?
Lenses
Waveguides

11. Today’s Activity Make your own refractive elements!
Use these to construct a path for light through an optical obstacle course!
How to make the complete the course?
That’s your problem!
Process
Design elements that can bend, steer, guide light.
Optimize these components.
How sharp of a bend can you make?
What happens at internal reflection?
What are advantages of lenses vs. waveguides?
Develop a design for navigating the obstacle course
Try to get the most light to the end of the course!

12. Optical Obstacle Course
10:30-11:00: Carve out lenses, prisms, waveguides and determine their properties 11:00-11:30: Take obstacle course layout and start adding your optical components 11:30-11:40 Build your optical system, see if you can get light to both port 1 and port 2! 11:40-11:50 Present your system to the group -discuss pros and cons -What are causes of loss? -room for improvement How do we go nano?