Seminar Announcement: Thi Ngoc Lam Tran

Data pubblicazione: 18-lug-2025

Announcement
Friday, 25 July 2025, 15:00
Sala Grande Palazzina B via alla Cascata 56/C

"Development of rare-earth doped glasses on silicon nitride for on-chip amplifiers and lasers"

Thi Ngoc Lam Tran
Postdoc researcher at Photonics Research Group,
UGent – Imec,
Belgium
https://www.photonics.intec.ugent.be/

Abstract
In recent years, the integration of solid-state gain materials, particularly rare-earth-doped media, onto photonic platforms such as silicon and silicon nitride has emerged as a promising frontier for on-chip lasers. These integrated lasers offer exceptional coherence, power stability, and access to unique wavelength regimes, enabling applications in sensing, precision metrology, spectroscopy, and quantum technologies.

While notable progress has been made in translating traditional solid-state lasers, such as Ti:sapphire, erbium, and thulium lasers—into chip-scale architectures, significant challenges remain. Achieving precise doping control, maintaining high optical quality with low propagation losses, and extending wavelength coverage are key hurdles that still need to be addressed.

In this seminar, I will provide an overview of the rapidly evolving field of on-chip solid-state laser integration, with a focus on recent advances in rareearth-doped thin films and emerging fabrication techniques. I will also present new results from our ongoing collaboration with IFN-CNR Trento, where we are developing rare-earth-doped gain materials compatible with silicon nitride photonic platforms. This includes recent progress on the fabrication and integration of active rare-earth-doped Si3N4 hybrid waveguides, their preliminary optical characterization in an underexplored wavelength range, and insights into the design and fabrication challenges involved in enabling these novel on-chip amplifiers and lasers.