Chromosol, founded by Professor William Gillin (pictured), will develop technology to allow the manipulation of light directly on silicon. While optical communication is quicker and more energy efficient than the traditional copper infrastructure, previous attempts to create such products have suffered from low yield, high cost and integration complexity. Chromosol’s technology aims to address and alleviate all of these problems.
Prof Gillin, director of QMUL’s Materials Research Institute, said: “Chromosol’s technology is easy to integrate and is compatible with existing processing techniques, providing a simple solution to a growing problem.”
Prof Gillin believes the technology could have a big impact on the energy use of data centres, where the use of copper cables to transfer data is stifling data centre evolution and high-performance computing. “Large amounts of energy are needed to move data electrically over relatively short distances,” he said. “If we can remove the need for this electrical data transfer then the power requirements of data centres will be reduced dramatically.”
The company has been backed by IP Group. “We’re delighted IP Group is supporting Chromosol and we look forward to working closely with them to commercialise our work,” Prof Gillin concluded.
