US Patent Issued to THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO on May 13 for "Heterogeneous rare-earth doped systems" (Illinois Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,298,557, issued on May 13, was assigned to THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (Chicago).

"Heterogeneous rare-earth doped systems" was invented by Tian Zhong (Chicago) and Christina Wicker (Chicago).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Technologies for a strong rare-earth-ion interactions are disclosed. In the illustrative embodiment, a heterogeneous slot waveguide is formed with two layers of silicon surrounding a layer of Er:Y2O3, resulting in a waveguide that supports a TM mode with a strong confinement of electromagnetic field near the erbium dopants. The strong concentration of electromagnetic field and small mode volume allows for strong interactio...