The scientific cooperation between the CNR Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology (CSMFO) in Trento and the Wrocław-based Institute of Low Temperatures and Structural Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences is a long list of initiatives in which both units participate. The scientific and technological expertise in glass photonics, as well as the diagnostic techniques, which constitute an important patrimony of the two laboratories, cover the full range from the study of physical mechanisms crucial for the synthesis, development and characterization of innovative photonic materials to design and fabrication of devices suitable for application in strategic interest areas such as sensing, information technology, light sources, biocompatible materials, row materials.
The INTiBS - IFN area of expertise includes investigation of local structure, crystallization, energy transfer, optical and spectroscopic properties of rare-earth activated glasses and planar waveguides prepared by several techniques including sol-gel route, RF-sputtering, and co-evaporation. Several original diagnostic techniques have been developed in order to assess the physical-chemical properties of synthesized materials. The research activity of the INTiBS-IFN is validated by a large number of scientific publications and communications and by active participation in international projects of strategic interest. This is also thanks to the innovative lift of the proposed research subjects that favor cross-disciplinarily among physics, chemistry, material science, and technologies crucial for the fabrication of materials, structures, and photonic devices as well as for the assessment of their physical and chemical properties. The tackled subjects enhance the growing of technological and scientific competences in the area of photonics potentially transferable to innovative commercial deliverables.
The project on elastic photonics is primarily a collaboration between the teams of physicist dr Maurizio Ferrari, research director of the italian institute, and the excellent polish chemist, professor Anna Łukowiak. As already done in electronics, passive and active photonic devices demand integration on flexible substrates for a broad spectrum of application applications ranging from optical interconnection to sensors for civil infrastructure and environments, to coherent and uncoherent light sources and functionalized coatings for integration on biological tissue. The fabricated systems should operate in several deformation conditions i.e. bending, folding, rolling, twisting, stretching and compression. To succeed in, the following steps are crucial: i) design and fabrication of appropriate flexible substrate using the opportunities offered by the sol-gel technology to go beyond the standard polymers; ii) realization of planar waveguides and photonic crystals deposited on the flexible substrates reducing radiative losses and maintaining a constant adhesion under mechanical deformation; iii) develop a predictive model of the optical dependence on the mechanical behavior of the flexible photonic device. Targeted breakthrough: Fabrication of novel flexible optical layers by sol-gel and radio frequency sputtering deposition techniques. The outcome of the project is to give a technological way to transform intrinsically rigid or brittle materials into a highly mechanically flexible and optically functional geometry.