I-Corps: Translation Potential of a Silicon-Native Light Source Platform Enabled by Momentum-Engineered Photonic States

Award ID: 2630100

This I-Corps project is based on the development of silicon chips that generate light directly within the same material used for electronics and photonic circuits. Current silicon photonic systems depend on a separate light source made from different semiconductor materials, creating a widespread industry bottleneck that adds manufacturing cost, precision-alignment requirements, packaging complexity, supply-chain dependence, and scaling limits across computing, communications, sensing, and emerging quantum technologies. This technology addresses that problem by making silicon itself an efficient source of visible and near-infrared light using processes compatible with established silicon manufacturing. The potential includes simpler and more densely integrated photonic chips, lower packaging and assembly costs, improved manufacturing yield, and new product architectures that are difficult or impossible with separately attached light sources. This may result in more energy-efficient computing and data movement, compact sensing systems for health, environmental, and industrial applications, stronger domestic semiconductor manufacturing, and reduced dependence on specialized compound-semiconductor supply chains. This I-Corps project utilizes experiential learning coupled with first-hand investigation of the industry ecosystem to assess the translation potential of momentum-engineered photonic states as a silicon-native light source platform. Silicon is normally a poor light emitter because conventional photons cannot supply the momentum needed for efficient radiative transitions across its indirect bandgap. This technology confines optical fields to dimensions below approximately 2 nanometers, broadening the photon momentum distribution to match electronic crystal momenta and opening radiative recombination pathways without altering silicon's band structure. Previous research demonstrated enhanced optical absorption, ultrabroadband photoluminescence spanning the visible and near-infrared, and electrically driven near-white electroluminescence from an all-silicon prototype. Equivalent behavior using metallic, semiconductor, and dielectric confinement structures supports the material-agnostic nature of the mechanism, while thin-film deposition, low-temperature laser crystallization, and standard electrode patterning provide a complementary metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS)-compatible fabrication route. This may enable monolithic integration of light generation with waveguides, modulators, detectors, and electronics on a single silicon platform. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ruth Shuman