CIPS/OSA Brown Bag Seminar Series

Thursday, October 1, 2009

12 noon , RLE Haus Conference Room 36-428

Multimaterial Fiber Devices and Systems

Ofer Shapira

Virtually all electronic and optoelectronic devices necessitate a challenging assembly of conducting, semiconducting and insulating materials into specific geometries with low-scattering interfaces and microscopic feature dimensions. A variety of wafer-based processing approaches have been developed to address these requirements, which although successful are at the same time inherently restricted by the wafer size, its planar geometry, and the complexity associated with sequential high-precision processing steps. In contrast, optical-fiber drawing from a macroscopic preformed rod is simpler and yields extended lengths of uniform fibers. Recently, a new family of fibers composed of conductors, semiconductors and insulators has emerged. These fibers share the basic device attributes of their traditional electronic and optoelectronic counterparts, yet are fabricated using conventional preform-based fiber-processing methods, yielding kilometers of functional fiber devices. Two complementary approaches towards realizing sophisticated functions are explored: on the single-fiber level, the integration of a multiplicity of functional components into one fiber, and on the multiple-fiber level, the assembly of large-scale two- and three-dimensional geometric constructs made of many fibers. When applied together these two approaches pave the way to multifunctional fabric systems.