Session 1C — Lectures by Fellows/Associates

Renee M. Borges, IISc, Bengaluru

Mechanophotonics - An approach toward All-Organic Photonic Integrated Circuits View Presentation

Nano-/micro-organic solids have emerged as promising non-silicon-based alternative materials for fabricating miniaturized organic photonic components, such as optical waveguides (active/passive), lasers, resonators, filters, and modulators suitable for constructing all-organic photonic integrated circuits (OPICs). Miniature crystal (rigid/flexible) optical waveguides are useful for controlling and manipulating light propagation down to microscale. In optical resonators, their mirror-like geometry allows them to trap the photons tightly by repeated total internal reflection at the air-matter interface and produce multimodal optical emissions. Low-optical-loss resonators are good optical gain media, therefore potential elements for microlasers. The guided light-intensity and- speed can be modulated using light-driven refractive index changes in photochromic crystal waveguides. Atomic force microscopy is an effective technique to mechanically micromanipulate miniature organic photonic components towards OPICs - an approach developed in our group, known as Mechanophotonics. These OPICs employ active, passive, and energy-transfer mechanisms for their operations. The OPICs switch, split, direct, and filter optical signals useful for signal enhancement, sensing, information processing and switchable photonic device applications.