Concept illustration depicting the trap-assisted Auger-Meitner process at a calcium substitutional impurity (blue) in a gallium nitride crystal lattice (green and silver spheres). An incoming electron (red) gets trapped in a localized state (purple), and its energy is transferred to another electron. Illustration by Fangzhou Zhao.

Alex Mei, 2023 University Award of Distinction recipient

UC Santa Barbara’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) has received its seventh consecutive major grant from the National Science Foundation.

An image of the newly developed transmitter assembly. The small, brownish chip on the left is the electronic integrated circuit (EIC), and the larger, black-and-gold chip on the right is the photonic integrated circuit (PIC). The long structure on the left side of the PIC is the modulator, which converts the electrical signal into an optical one. Light gets coupled into and out of the chip through the fibers on the right side of the PIC. Everything is mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB), with gold wire bonds connecting the chips. Data flows from left to right, where the incoming electrical signal gets amplified by the EIC, converted to an optical signal by the PIC, and sent out via fiber to its destination.

Robert McMeeking, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and materials