Bio: Dieter Bimberg was a Professor of EE, RWTH Aachen, before assuming the Chair of Applied Physics at TU Berlin, founding the Center of NanoPhotonics. He held guest professorships at Technion, Haifa, U.C.S.B. CA, and HP in Palo Alto, CA. In 2018 he was appointed as executive director of the “Bimberg Chinese German Center for Green Photonics” at CIOMP of the CAS.
He is a member of the German Academy of Sciences, the EU Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the US Academies of Engineering and of Inventors, the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence (NAAI), the CORE Academy and Chinese Optical Society, a Life Fellow of APS and IEEE, Vice-President of the IAIA. He is recipient of important international awards, like the UNESCO Nanoscience Award, the Max-Born Award and Medal of IoP and DPG, the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award of IEEE, the MOC Award of the JSAP, the Jun-Ichi Nishizawa Award of IEEE, the Stern-Gerlach Award of DPG. He received honorary doctorates of the University of Lancaster, UK, and the St. Petersburg Alferov University.
He has authored more than 1600 papers, 71 patents and patent applications, and six books. The number of times his research works has been cited is 72,000+ and his Hirsch factor is 118.
Abstract: Since 2018 novel consumer applications like Netflix, Block Chain, LIDAR… and most recently AI, not known 2018, have led to a huge increase of internet traffic of 60%/year, much more than then originally predicted by companies like Cisco. This increased use of the internet is increasing its electrical power consumption due to increased data traffic mostly inside data centers. NVDIA announced in 10/24 AI racks consuming 1 MW. New data centers have crossed the 500 MW level. Predictions e.g by IEA Paris or the US government show that the energy consumption will rise in a short time to an extent not further tolerable.
New device designs are developed by us, focusing on energy-efficiency of data traffic at all hierarchy levels combined with larger data rates. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for 400+ Gbit/s single fiber data transmission across OM5 multimode fiber with a record energy to bit rate ratio (EDR) of less than ~90 fJ/bit @ 100 Gbit/s at 940 and 1060 nm nm wavelengths are presented. Photon lifetime management is a new key to adopt overall energy consumption to the bit rate of the data traffic (e.g. 25 Gb/s, 50 Gb/s...) [1,2].
Novel designs of Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) are presented leading to a strong reduction of thermally induced band gap shift as a function of current and of the series resistance. In our simplest approach (called MUHA 1) blind holes or rings are dry etched into standard devices and then filled with gold resulting in both an effective heat drain technology and electrical shunt, reducing the device series resistance [3]. A different, more sophisticated approach (called MUHA 2) uses the dry etched holes or rings to oxidize the apertures [4]. The shape and size of the aperture now depend on the arrangement of holes, opening the way for polarized emission without etching gratings. First results to validate larger output power, rollover current for single mode emission devices, and reduced series resistance are presented for both cases. Finally, multi-aperture VCSELs (called MAVs) based on positioning multiple MUHA 2 in one high power pseudo single-mode emitter are realized [5].
Given the progress in reducing EDR of VCSELs below 100 fJ/bit presented here, the next focus should be on the EDR of the driver and the complete module. EDR of commercial drivers is presently at least 10 times larger than that of the VCSELs. Gerfers et al. [6] developed a new driver approach based on ultra-fast CMOS ICs allowing also pre-emphasis showing radically reduced EDR. First results of integration with our VCSELs will be presented. Our VCSELs can be released from the substrate and directly deposited on the driver circuit.
Thus, complete front-end modules are expected to allow for the first time much improved energy efficiency of Tb/sec dense wavelength multiplexing across distances of several 100 m to 1 km in data centers.
[1] G. Larisch, R. Rosales, and D. Bimberg, , IEEE J. Select. Topics in Quantum Electronics, 25, 1701105 (2019) and G. Larisch, S. Tian, D. Bimberg, Optics Express 28, 18331 (2020)
[2] Bin Wang, ….Sicong Tian, Hui Li, Cun-Zheng Ning, and Dieter Bimberg “Polarization Discrimination and Signal-Integrity Optimization for 1060 nm Elliptical-Aperture Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers”, Optica 2025 under consideration
[3] M A Maricar, S. Tian, and D. Bimberg, patents in the EU, US and CN, e.g. EP 23199013,
[4] G. Larisch, S. Tian, and D. Bimberg, patents in the EU, US and CN, e.g. EP 3 961 829
[5] G. Larisch, S. Tian, and D. Bimberg, patents in the EU. US and CN e.g. EP 4007092
[6] N. Kioulos,…Asian ISCAS 2026, Shanghai