Scientists in India have built a silicon chip that can transmit data at up to 100 gigabits per second, a result that could help shape the sixth generation of wireless networks.
Researchers at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bengaluru, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, designed the chip to carry terahertz waves — the very high-frequency signals expected to underpin 6G — through engineered barriers with only minimal loss.
The chip uses a technique known as topological photonics. Its silicon photonic crystal is patterned with triangular holes arranged in a honeycomb lattice, similar to the structure of graphene, which guides terahertz waves along boundaries while resisting a form of signal degradation known as backscattering.
In tests, a single engineered barrier caused only about 1 to 2 per cent signal loss, while two consecutive barriers produced losses of around 2 to 3 per cent. By comparison, similar barriers caused far greater losses in conventional waveguides, according to the researchers.
The team fabricated three devices from high-resistivity silicon, a material compatible with established semiconductor manufacturing. They included a waveguide with two consecutive barriers, an omega-shaped structure with four sharp bends and a central barrier, and a power splitter with a barrier in one branch. The double-barrier and omega-shaped devices reached 48 and 60 gigabits per second respectively, while the power splitter supported transmission at 100 gigabits per second using QAM-32 modulation.
The study, led by Assistant Professor Abhishek Kumar, has been published in the journal Advanced Materials. The findings could pave the way for compact terahertz circuits capable of routing and splitting high-speed signals on a single chip.
That matters because 6G networks are expected to operate at terahertz frequencies, where the available bandwidth is far greater than in the bands used by today’s mobile networks. The challenge has been building components that can handle those signals without losing them — and doing so in silicon, the material the chip industry already knows how to manufacture at scale.
The performance figures reported here come from the research team’s own tests as summarised by the India Brand Equity Foundation; independent verification of the results has not yet been reported.
Sources: India Brand Equity Foundation — https://www.ibef.org/news/new-silicon-chip-enables-high-speed-terahertz-data-transmission-could-advance-6g-networks
The image is a file photo of a silicon wafer, not the chip described in this story.
