Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Tiny laser gives big boost to high-speed data transmission

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – High-speed communication just got a turbo boost, thanks to a new laser technology developed at the University of Illinois that transmits error-free data over fiber optic networks at a blazing fast 40 gigabits per second – the fastest in the United States.

Milton Feng, the Nick Holonyak Jr. Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, demonstrated the tiny, fast device along with postdoctoral researcher Fei Tan, graduate students Mong-Kai Wu and Michael Liu, and Holonyak, who is an emeritus professor. The team published its results in the journal IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

As computation shifts into the petascale and beyond, processor speeds have outstripped transfer speeds, creating a bottleneck and hindering applications. Anyone who has tried to stream video over a dial-up Internet connection knows that the fastest processor won’t help the file load quicker. And in the age of “big data” and cloud computing, there’s a lot of information swirling among servers.

Laser devices called oxide VCSELs are used to transmit data over fiber optic cables at high speed. They can carry data faster and in greater quantities than traditional electrical cables.

“The oxide VCSEL is the standard right now for industry,” Feng said. “Today, all the optical interconnects use this technology. The world is in a competition on how to make it fast and efficient, and that’s what this technology is. At the U. of I., we were able to make this technology the fastest in the U.S.”

How fast is it? As a comparison, home high-speed Internet connections can reach speeds of about 100 megabits per second. At 40 gigabits per second, this technology is 400 times faster. Thanks to its small size, the new oxide VCSEL also has excellent energy efficiency – using 100 times less energy than electrical wires – and transmits data very accurately, with no defects detected in an hour of operation.

Fast and accurate data transfer is crucial for personalized medicine, cloud computing and many other applications. For example, in order to harness the power of supercomputing for personalized medicine, an enormous amount of biometric data must be collected from a patient. But the data on their own are not useful without analysis. The data have to be sent from the lab to a computing facility, where they’re analyzed and sent to the patient’s physician to help make a diagnosis or a tailored treatment plan.

“Information is not useful if you cannot transmit it,” Feng said. “If you cannot transfer data, you just generate garbage. So the transfer technology is very important. High-speed data transfer will allow tele-computation, tele-medicine, tele-instruction. It all depends on how fast you can transfer the information.”

The Illinois team’s oxide VCSELs operate at room temperature, so the next step is to finesse the design so they can operate in the very hot environment at data centers.

Feng believes that researchers could push oxide VCSELs to about 60 gigabits per second, but not far beyond that because of the inherent limitations in the materials. But he’s not worried about reaching the limits of VCSEL technology, because in 2004 he and Holonyak developed a new technology ready to step in where VCSEL leaves off: the transistor laser.

Feng is associated with the Micro and Nano Technology Laboratory and the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the U. of I.

To reach Milton Feng, call 217-333-8080; email feng@illinois.edu. The paper, “850nm Oxide-Confined VCSEL With low Relative Intensity Noise and 40Gb/s Error Free Data Transmission,” is available online or from the News Bureau. VCSEL stands for vertical cavity surface emitting laser.

Read Next

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010