Science Foundation Ireland is helping a researcher in Cork to develop the next generation of machines, which use light rather than electrons to handle and store data. Dick Ahlstrom reports
Photonics is one of the new buzzwords in the world of computing and communications. It describes the next generation of computer equipment, systems that will operate not just by pushing electrons about but also by using light.
Some aspects of photonics are already familiar to us, according to Prof Eoin O'Reilly, who holds the Science Foundation Ireland research chair at the National Microelectronics Research Centre, which is part of University College Cork. "In photonics you carry out your operations using light packets," says O'Reilly.
CDs and DVDs rely on photonics, using lasers to burn information onto a disc, then read the digitised information they contain. Another application is the fibre-optic cables that move high-speed, high-volume information over long distances using pulses of light.
Electronics is the business of manipulating electrons. Photonics is the business of manipulating photons of light. Today's computers handle and store data by controlling a current flow. Tomorrow's will also use laser light and switches that channel photons.
Prof O'Reilly and the centre will be at the forefront of this advanced research area. He was selected to be among the first 10 principal investigators awarded funding under SFI, which supports research in two key areas, information and communications technology (ICT) and biotechnology.
His research initiative, under the ICT banner, is entitled "The physics of next-generation ICT photonic devices". In particular, he is trying to explain the complex physics behind the novel materials that will form the basis of the emerging photonic technologies.
Prof O'Reilly has years of experience in how new materials perform. "My background has very much been in understanding the materials and their impact," he says. "It is predominately within materials." His recent work involved a new semiconductor material, gallium indium nitride arsenide, which can be used as a conventional semiconductor or in photonics.
"One of the things that attracted me to the NMRC is it already has significant activity in the area of semiconductor materials, their growth and characterisation," he says. New materials can also be prototyped there, which means they can move quickly from basic research into the commercial area if they prove promising.
His new research group at the NMRC will include three senior postdoctoral researchers, four or five other postdocs and some students. "I am aiming to have about 10 to 12 people and we are in the process of ramping up and recruiting."
The research will include a wide range of ICT areas, but with a focus on materials, trying to engineer the underlying physics of a device to make it work better if used in a system. The team will characterise materials but also use theoretical modelling to predict performance.
Prof O'Reilly is one of four principal investigators in this round of SFI funding to have relocated here from abroad. He had been based since 1984 at the University of Surrey, where he was head of the physics department. He acknowledges that it was unlikely he would have left but for the SFI programme, which opened up new research opportunities for high-quality scientists.
He says he was "tempted by the SFI" having heard about the "sea change" in research funding here brought about by science spending under the Government's National Development Plan.
The decision to move came when the NMRC approached him to lead a SFI project on photonics. "I knew the people in the NMRC, having been involved in EU projects with them over the past few years," Prof O'Reilly says.
"I thought it looked like a very attractive proposition."
Prof O'Reilly is originally from Dublin and did his undergraduate studies at Trinity College, Dublin. He did his PhD at the famous Cavendish Laboratory, at the University of Cambridge.