Imec Scientist Awarded €2.5 Million ERC Advanced Grant

Imec announced that Jan Genoe has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. With the grant of €2.5 million euros for a five-year period, Genoe’s team will develop and integrate the breakthrough technology needed to prove the possibility of high-quality video-rate holographic projection. ERC Advanced Grants are awarded by the European Research Council to allow outstanding scientists to pursue groundbreaking, high-risk projects.
 
Today, despite many efforts by researchers worldwide, there are no holographic projectors that allow video-rate electronically controlled projection of complex holograms. Optically rewriteable holograms exist, but they are too slow; acoustically-formed holograms can be switched fast but the image complexity is very limited. With a breakthrough combination of smart electronics, optics and materials, imec’s Genoe aims to clear the roadblocks and enable next-generation video holography.
 
“Advanced CMOS technologies enable to write huge hologram patterns at data rates beyond 10 Gbit/s, we can design a front end that can control charges and voltage patterns at sub-wavelength resolution,” said Genoe. “Moreover, we can grow the necessary waveguides, couple laser light into them, and integrate transparent semiconducting oxides to bring charges close to a waveguide. This grant offers us the opportunity to merge all the necessary technology to make this giant leap in holography.”
 
Genoe is a distinguished member of technical staff of imec’s Large Area Electronics (LAE) department and part-time professor at KU Leuven (ESAT, Technology Campus Diepenbeek). Before joining imec, Genoe worked at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Grenoble as a human capital and mobility fellow of the European Community. His current research interests are with designing circuits with organic and oxide transistors, but also with organic photovoltaics and piezo-electric devices. Genoe is the author and co-author of more than 150 papers in refereed journals. He is reviewer for a broad range of journals and is member of the Technology Directions international program committee of the ISSCC.