Daniil M. Lukin, Melissa A. Guidry and Jelena Vučković
Traditionally used for abrasives, LEDs and transistors, the material may enable scalable quantum and nonlinear photonics through direct integration of solid-state qubits into photonic circuits.
SiC crystals [Getty Images]
The 2000s were a simpler time for integrated photonics, when a handful of material platforms dominated research and industrial applications. The past decade, however, has seen an explosion of new photonics materials: GaP, Ta2O5, SiC, AlN, LiNbO3, diamond and others. The enthusiasm for new materials stems in part from the high-level of technological know-how the integrated photonics community has developed—which has built the confidence to take advantage of exotic platforms with the best intrinsic properties for a given application.
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