Photonic crystal lasers and membranes for smart society and biomedical applications (Seminar)

Jones Seminar on Science, Technology, and Society.
"Photonic crystal lasers and membranes for smart society and biomedical applications."
Weidong Zhou, Professor, University of Texas at Arlington.
April 14, 2023.

In the 20th century, electronics was the dominant technology, enabled by optics and photonics. The 21st century will feature optics and photonics as the dominant technology, enabled by electronics. As an example, photonics will play a critical role towards a connected smart society, a society with the intensive co-evolution of virtual and physical, digital and analog, human and machine. The laser, in the 60 years since its invention, has been the critical engine in virtually every facet of modern life. In this talk, I will first present some recent advances in photonic crystal lasers, the third-generation semiconductor laser technology. The challenges in scaling towards watts level high power high beam quality lasers will be discussed. In the second part, I will introduce the micro transfer printing processes for heterogeneous integration of different thin film structures with applications in silicon photonics and flexible optoelectronics. Hybrid membrane lasers were developed for energy efficient on-chip integration, with potentials towards few photon attojoule operation. Optical sensors and bioresorbable optical elements were also developed for biomedical applications. The social impacts will also be discussed, for applications in sensing, communications, health, and sustainable smart society in the 21st century — the “Age of Light”.

Weidong Zhou obtained BS and ME degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and PhD degree from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He worked at CIENA Corporation for three years before joining University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), where he is currently a Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering, working Dr. Zhou and his group has been working on semiconductor optoelectronics and nanophotonic materials and devices. The group has made significant contributions in photonic crystal membrane photonics, especially photonic crystal lasers and sensors, for integrated silicon photonics and flexible optoelectronics. Dr. Zhou is a fellow of SPIE, a fellow of Optica, a senior member of IEEE, and a member of APS, and AAAS. Dr. Zhou’s major awards include Member of UTA Academy of Distinguished Scholars (2016), UTA Outstanding Research Achievement Award (2015), College of Engineering Excellence in Research Award (2013), Univ. of Michigan Rackham Predoctoral Fellow award (2000-2001), IEEE/LEOS (Photonics) Society Graduate Student Fellowship award (2000), Tsinghua University Outstanding Graduate Award (Gold medal, 1993), Outstanding ("San-Hao") Student of Beijing City (1992), etc.