Rare earth doping by ion implantation is a relatively new field of research. I had started it in 1991, and it grew dramatically in the years that followed. My review summarizes our work on a broad range of materials in the 1991-1997 period and puts it in a broader perspective.

  Can you describe the significance of your work for the field of photonics research?

Rare earth doped materials have proven to find applications in planar optical amplifiers, lasers, LEDs, light sources, and as we have shown recently, detectors. In addition, rare earth ions are ideal probes in experiments on photonic crystals, optical bandstructure and local density of states, and imaging of optical modes, as they are stable, have long lifetimes, and do not bleach under optical pumping as is the case with many dyes.

  What were the circumstances that led you to do this research?

I was a postdoc at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1989-1991. There I learned about the importance of optical materials for telecommunication applications. I found out that erbium-doped materials that emit light at the standard telecom wavelength of 1.5 microns could play a key role in this application. I then had the opportunity to start my own group at the FOM Institute in Amsterdam, where an accelerator for erbium ion implantation was available. This led to a project on erbium-implanted thin film photonic materials. The group grew in size, and we now have a full Photonics department working on optical materials. By putting our expertise on ion beams and optical techniques together, we were able to do something really new.

Professor Albert Polman, Ph.D.
FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics
Amsterdam, the Netherlands