X. APPENDIX V: FINAL SELF-ASSESSMENT
PROGRAM TITLE: 總計畫-建構兆位元紀元的光電科技(II)
Main Project-Photonic Science and Technology for the Tera-Era (II)
ASSESSMENT SUBJECT SCORE
（1~5,LOW TO HIGH） Importance & Innovation of the Program’s Major Tasks 5
Clarity and Presentation of the Report 5
Viability of the Program’s Approaches & Methodologies 5 Principal Investigator’s Competence for Leading the Program 5 Interface & Integration between Overall & Sub-Project(s) 4 Interface & Integration among All Sub-Projects 4
PROGRAM’S CONTENTS&PERFORMANCE
Manpower & Expenditures 5
Contribution in Enhancing the Institute’s International Academic Standing 5
PROGRAM’S RESULTS Impact on Advancing Teaching or on Technology Development 4
Total Score 42
REVIEWER’S COMMENTS &SUGGESTION:
This is the summary of six viewers’ comments and suggestions.
1. The project has been executed successfully with total 686 international journal publications, 553 international conference publications and 324 domestic conference publications. 5 book chapters, 47 domestic patents granted and 29 international patents granted and good educational outreach. Overall evaluation is very high, further support is suggested to maintain the level of the output.
2. The budget table did not give a total sum of either the entire program or the projects. An inclusion of such information would help the reviewer a lot to spot the major figures.
3. The project has built several unique platforms for further researches. This helped greatly to put some of the Taiwan’s photonics R and D efforts in a high-visibility regime even internationally. However, the description of impact on the industry was not given.
4. The relation of the results and program objective was not clear. There was not much program objective description given.
5. The achievement of this project was more from individual professors rather than from team work.
6. A better interface and integration among all sub-projects is really needed as the synergy among the sub-projects could enhance the overall impact of this interdisciplinary program. In the future, Biophotonics (subproject 4) should probably be a major research program by itself, and not part of this Nano- and Tera-photonics program due to the very different nature of the research goals, focus and research methodologies.
7. Considered the budget and manpower this project has been supported, more active participating in the international societies and serving on major conference committee was expected.
Program Reviewer’s Signature: Cheng-Chung Lee 2008/05/30
165 PRINCIPLE INVESTIGATOR’S FEEDBACK:(AVAILABLE)
1. The project has been executed successfully with total 686 international journal publications, 553 international conference publications and 324 domestic conference publications. 5 book chapters, 47 domestic patents granted and 29 international patents granted and good educational outreach. Overall evaluation is very high, further support is suggested to maintain the level of the output.
Reply: We would like to thank the reviewers for their kind comments. Unfortunately, there are no follow-up projects for PPAEU-II. In my opinion, the PPAEU as a vehicle is better than that of the current so called “5 yr 5 B” plan.
Although we have published a lot of papers in top journals and conferences, I am more proud of the world-class results that were recognized internationally, e.g., > 400 Gb optical storage, first electrically-pumped GaN VECSEL, slow-light devices with highest bandwidth-delay product, a Biometric optoelectronic system for real-time walker recognition, etc.
2. The budget table did not give a total sum of either the entire program or the projects. An inclusion of such information would help the reviewer a lot to spot the major figures.
Reply: The report has been revised to include budget information of the whole project and the three topical areas.
3. The project has built several unique platforms for further researches. This helped greatly to put some of the Taiwan’s photonics R and D efforts in a high-visibility regime even internationally. However, the description of impact on the industry was not given.
Reply: The co-PIs of the projects have conducted ~ 20 industrial co-op projects over the four years. This is an indication of the level of interaction between the co-PIs and the industry. The photopolymer technology for volume holographic storage was transferred to 中環 CMC corporation. The storage capacity and speed are more than 10 times those of state-of-art Blu-DVD. At a later stage, electrically-pumped GaN blue laser diode first developed by the project team can be integrated into the optical head for the holographic disk. This could leap-frog the current technology. Solid-state lighting is shaping up as a major industry in the world. GaN LED technology developed was transferred to 晶元 Epistar and others.
4. The relation of the results and program objective was not clear. There was not much program objective description given.
Reply: The report has been modified to include a brief description of program objectives.
In this project, we propose to conduct cutting-edge research to selected areas of photonic science and technology, widely recognized as the enabling technology for the transmission and processing of information at rate of Tb/s as well as for the storage of information density approaching Tbytes/in2.
In addition to the generation of new knowledge, the output of this program is expected to provide highly-trained photonics professionals and core technologies that are needed for the build up of the information infrastructures. For these three objectives, I think we have acquitted ourselves well. Cutting-edge research is always a moving target.
My concern has always been that we achieve results of high impact. In my opinion, our team consists of many of the top researchers in Taiwan. They should be allowed as much leverage to pursue first-rate research. The core laboratories were maintained so that the PIs and co-workers can have the resources to compete with top research teams in the world.
Please also note that the program was re-organized after it was approved. The funding level was less than one third of what we requested (about 36M/year). Therefore, we merge fundamental studies with material and devices (including volume holographi materials) into SP-1; optical communication and near-field storage into SP-2; micro-optics and OEIC into SP-3. The biophotonics project, SP-4 was left alone but supported at a minimum level. Needless to say, some of our more ambitious objectives were scrapped.
5 The achievement of this project was more from individual professors rather than from team work.
Reply: We list several collaboration projects that results from team work.
a). Using the adaptive coherent control technique, Profs. Jung Y. Huang and C. L. Pan (SP-1) studied semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors fabraicated by Prof. Jen-Inn Chyi (SP-3) and achieved a three-time increase in image contrast on regions with photoluminescent wavelength of InAs quantum dots differing only 18 nm by using coherent control nonlinear optical microscopy [JOSA B 22:1134 (2005), selected by the Virtual J.
Ultrafast Sci., 2005]. Saturable absorber mirrors are key devices for modelocking of ultrafast lasers. The novel microscopic technique also allows more insights into the InA quantum dots.
b). A few types of THz antennas and photonic transmitters that were fabricated on epi-layers grown in Prof.
Jen-Inn Chyi’s lab and fabricated by Prof. Jin-Wei Shi. [IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., Vol. 19, No. 11 pp. 840-842, June 1, 2007, to be published ,2008].
c). Within SP-1, Profs. H. C. Kuo, Jung Y. Huang, and C. –L. Pan collaborated in the development and elucidation of mechanisms of Enhanced photoresponse by a Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor photodetector with Si nanocrystals embedded in the oxide layer [Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 90, art. 051105, January 30, 2007]. Further, semiconductor THz quantum cascade laser (QCL) is a promising candidate for THz sources for the next-generation. Especially, QCLs with GaN-based quantum well structures have significant advantages over the currently demonstrated THz lasers in the GaAs-based material system. From the understanding of the fundamental material properties, we are
working on the development of such high-performance THz QCLs.
d) SP-1 and SP-2 collaborated to achieve slow-light devices. It boasted the largest bandwidth-delay product of semiconductor-based slow-light devices.
. A better interface and integration among all sub-projects is really needed as the synergy among the sub-projects could enhance the overall impact of this interdisciplinary program. In the future, Biophotonics (subproject 4) should probably be a major research program by itself, and not part of this Nano- and Tera-photonics program due to the very different nature of the research goals, focus and research methodologies. Unfortunately, there are no follow-up projects for PPAEU-II. To my knowledge, at least a couple of proposals were submitted taking advantage of the strengths and synergy of the sub-projects. Firstly, members of SP-1, SP-2 and SP-3 propose to demonstrate certain milestones of multi-service THz Radio-over-fiber communication and sensing network for future ultra-broadband media, data and biomedical applications. In collaboration with Prof. C. T. Lee (NCKU), several of us (Profs. Jung Y. Huang, Ci-Ling Pan, Hao-Chung Kuo, and Dr. Jia-Min Shieh) have submitted a proposal to the National Nanoscience Program, entitled, “Photovoltaic technology with self-assembled nanostructures of silicon quantum-dots in mesoporous silica”. It has just been approved.
Biophotonics is of course an important field. It is an interdisciplinary field that can be explored from many angles, from the ultrafast to device and nanotechnology.
7. Considered the budget and manpower this project has been supported, more active participating in the international societies and serving on major conference committee was expected.
The budget of the whole project is about 36 M/year. The level of support per co-PI is not larger than many of the basic science or nano-projects. There are already a decent level of participation in international societies and committee work. Please refer to the reports. On the other hand, excess committee work would hamper the time faculties can devote to conduct first-rate research.
PI’s Signature: