Caltech Breakthrough Brings Fiber-Optic Performance to Silicon Chips

Caltech Breakthrough Brings Fiber-Optic Performance to Silicon Chips

Caltech’s new fiber-like photonic chips achieve record-low visible-light loss, enabling more coherent lasers and next-generation quantum and sensing technologies. Caltech researchers have created a technique that allows light to travel across silicon wafers with extremely low signal loss, nearing the performance of optical fiber even at visible wavelengths. Achieving this level of efficiency on a [...]

What enabled record-low visible-light loss on silicon chips?

Fiber like photonics brings optical clarity to silicon Engineers at Caltech have reworked on‑chip light pathways so silicon devices can guide visible wavelengths with losses previously achieved only in glass optical fiber. By shaping the photonic structures on silicon to behave like…