NODE · NanOengineering cutting-edge micro-Devices in the far-infrared through advanced material Embedding

Artificial semiconductor heterostructures played a pivotal role in modern optoelectronic technologies, providing a highly effective platform for the generation of light across the mid-infrared (3-25um wavelengths) and Terahertz frequency ranges (50-250um). However, their challenging quantum engineering also limited their adoption in a spectral region (25-50um) still unexplored, and their use in frontier domains as integrated photonics and quantum science.NODE aims to intersect two materials platforms that in the last decade widely progressed – artificial semiconductor heterostructures and bi-dimensional materials – to deliver a technological revolution in the whole far-infrared (FIR) (25-250um). By combining the potential offered by the lithographic engineering of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) with the giant non-linearities of Dirac materials, NODE aims to develop compact and coherent, solid-state classical and not classical FIR sources, leading to an entirely new and disruptive platform of FIR instrumentation.To reach these ambitious objectives, the versatile quantum design of QCLs will be exploited to engineer an ultrabroadband gain spectrum. By inserting graphene or topological insulators in the core QCL semiconductor heterostructure and implementing resonators of exotic fashion - elliptical tapered ring microcavities, sculptured wire lasers or gate-tunable plasmonic lasers - NODE will deliver the first: ps pulse, ring micro-resonator FIR comb, squeezed FIR laser, and electrically pumped source in the Reststrahlen band. A fast FIR technology to probe quantum correlation effects will be also devised.Radically new concepts and interdisciplinary approaches, encompassing advanced materials and device engineering, non-linear and plasmonic phenomena, drive this ambitious project. Advancing the understanding of the complex non-linear dynamics in the devised systems, NODE prospects new directions and long-term impacts on fundamental, quantum and applied science.