Contacts: Associate Professor Søren Stobbe, ssto@fotonik.dtu.dk
Nanophotonic circuits are compact and extremely effective tools to manipulate light. For example, chip-scale nanocavities are essential for nanolasers, single-photon sources, and beyond. However, efficient and robust coupling between chips and fibers pose a number of challenges as well as trade-offs between size, price, and quality. While these chip-to-fiber-coupling methods are standard in industry, they are not fully developed for suspended nanomembranes often employed in, e.g., research on nanoelectromechanical photonics and quantum photonics.
This project aims to design a compact and efficient (high transmission and low reflection) focusing grating coupler, ultimately produce the coupler layout and numerical simulations in COMSOL Multiphysics to calculate its efficiency. If time allows, we can fabricate the grating coupler on a silicon chip and you can verify the simulated designs experimentally by performing transmission measurements in our optics lab!
No prior knowledge of numerical simulations, programming, electromagnetism, nanotechnology, or photonics is required, but a keen interest in or more these topics is obviously advantageous.
Figure 1: 3D model of a focusing grating coupler in COMSOL.
Figure 2: Optical mode-analysis of a 2D cross-section.