Analog to digital converters (ADC) are essential components to enhance performance of numerous equipment and systems, for both civilian and military applications. As the sampling rate of electronic ADCs will be particularly capped by sampling signal jitter (100 fs to the state of the art), optical approaches are studied to take advantage of much lower jitter obtained using laser pulses (fs or less). This ADC Poly proposal aims to demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative solution based on the use of an optical deflector, realized by using integrated optics technology. The deflector is the central component of an all-optical ADC that, ultimately, could be capable to sample at a very high rate of 40 Giga samples per second with a resolution of 6 bits or more, which could be then one of the best performances obtained with photonic ADCs. The demonstrator aimed in this project will consist of a deflector, based on an optical leaky waveguide made of electro-optic polymers (EO), capable of addressing a coding mask with 8 resolved lines (3 bits). The leakage angle is controlled by the voltage to be digitized which is applied to the driving electrodes. Active integrated optical components based on EO polymers, modulators for example, usually operate with a microstrip electrode on the EO polymer guide, ensuring an optimal overlap integral between optical and electrical waves. In the case of the deflector, the light leaks from the top of the optical waveguide, making this topology inoperative, so the driving electrode must be located laterally, on both sides of the optical waveguide, and additionally buried, to optimize this overlap. The first challenge of the project is therefore to develop a new technological fabrication process, more complex than those commonly used and to validate the behavior of the EO structure. The buried and laterally placed poling electrodes requested by our design do not allow using the usual poling scheme for chromophores. So, a microwave filter solution is proposed to enable both DC and microwave operation of electrodes. The leaky optical field, distributed along the waveguide, must be collected and focused in the detection plane. The second challenge is then to design an appropriate superstrate over the leaky waveguide as well as micro-optical elements to collect and focus the leaky lightwave. A task is specifically dedicated to the integrated design of the whole structure, optical and microwave parts, of the deflector, as well as the micro-optical components aiming collecting the leakage beam. The fabrication task is divided into several stages. At first, passive waveguides will be made, then phase modulators with the driving electrodes at the same level as the optical waveguide. The characterization of these intermediate components allows to determine the parameters requested for the optimization of the leak waveguide design for the deflector.

Electrons have a charge and a spin, but until recently, charges and spins have been considered separately. In conventional electronics, the charges are manipulated by electric fields but the spins are ignored. Other classical technologies, magnetic recording, for example, are using the spin but only through its macroscopic manifestation, the magnetization of a ferromagnet. This picture started to change in 1988 when the discovery of the giant magnetoresistance _GMR_ of the magnetic multilayers opened the way to an efficient control of the motion of the electrons by acting on their spin through the orientation of a magnetization. This rapidly triggered the development of a new field of research and technology, today called spintronics and, like the GMR, exploiting the influence of the spin on the mobility of the electrons in ferromagnetic materials. Semiconductor spintronics device physics is progressing along a similar path to metallic spintronics and has achieved remarkable success in the last decade. What we want to mainly explore is the conversion of an electrical spin polarized current into a circular polarized light and how we can take advantage of this effect to built spin polarized VECSEL. We can already anticipate that the ability to control and/or modulate the output polarization of lasers to electrically switch between orthogonal polarization states would be useful for host applications including i)coherent detection system, ii) new modulation formats for optical communications, optoelectronic oscillators and high precision clocks, iii) entangled states for secure communication and quantum cryptography, iiii) and optical switching. As a necessary requirement to progress, basic research including understanding of the spin relaxation mechanisms, material optimization of efficient spin injector and dynamic of the output signals will take a large part. The experimental answer of how much and how far can we drive a spin polarized current into a semiconductor will be a determining clue of this project. This project comes from a previous funded PNANO project MOMES ends in April 2009. It has brought together 7 partners and has covered a large area in the field of spintronic with semiconductors. The present proposal is one of the issue point identified as successful and needed to be pursued. 3 of the 4 partners of this project were already involved in the previous program. They already have the know how to built efficient spin injector CoFeB/MgO on top of III-V materials and they have demonstrated high conversion of spin polarized current in polarized circular light (<50%) in Spin LED experiment. The next step but not the less along this proposal is to extend this realisation to spin VECSEL. The active participation of the Thales company in this goal is a supplementary asset which will certainly benefit to speed up technological transfer from fundamental research to applied research.

EPOSBP project deals with black phosphorus (BP) which has joined the 2D materials family only very recently in 2014. The first representative of this new class of materials is Graphene, isolated ten years ago, which discovery sparkled an intense research activity. However, the lack of band gap in graphene has launched a quest for new 2D materials. The field has gradually been enriched by new contenders such as hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN) and more recently the transition metal dichalcogenides family (e.g MoS2), leading to the emergence of a broad family of 2D van der Waals materials. In the specific optoelectronic field, the progress has remained limited due to the impossibility to gather together a direct bandgap AND a high carrier mobility within the same material. In this direction, black phosphorus (BP) has attracted an explosive interest since 2014 as it displays major properties for (opto-)electronic devices: (1) high hole and electron mobilities in thin layers of exfoliated BP (~3000 cm2 V-1 s-1). (2) high (~105) ON/OFF current ratio in a transistor configuration with ambipolar characteristics. (3) the BP bandgap is predicted to remain direct from the bulk to the monolayer, making it highly interesting for optical applications. The electronic structure near the Fermi level strongly depends on the number of layers, leading to a bandgap increase from the mid infrared (0.35 eV) in the bulk to the visible range (2 eV) in monolayers. Thus BP offers a unique spectral range in the 2D landscape. However, while early 2017 results seems to highlight BPs peculiar properties in ultrathin layers, only little is known from experimental measurements. Additionally, thanks to its natural low spin-orbit coupling, the BP could be expected to very efficiently preserve the spin lifetime of the carriers, as in graphene, but offering a semiconducting gap. This would be a unique opportunity for spin transport and spintronics. The objective of EPOSBP is to investigate these unique properties of BP and, capitalizing on them, to achieve new optically active flat materials from visible to mid-infrared. The dielectric response as well as the electronic behaviors and spin injection of BP transistor will be investigated to achieve tunable and electrically driven light emission. The project is decomposed into three tasks: 1) learning basics on BP properties aiming at defining a robust spectroscopic tools package for facilitating the integration of BP in devices, 2) fabrication and characterization of devices, 3) fabrication of BP transistors and observation of electroluminescence and efficient spin transport and 4) the demonstration of spin driven light emission. EPOSBP project constitutes a broad partnership that includes the best specialists and skills on 2D Black Phosphorus and Spintronics allied with specialists of most advanced relevant spectroscopic characterization techniques, integration of 2D materials in devices and specialists capable to demonstrate the potential of BP for innovative electroluminescence and tunable spin transport devices. The strong commitment of industrial partner Thales, with key interests in the semi-conductor area, is a strong enabler toward potential TRL rise of the project.

Acoustic discretion is an important problem in the field of naval operations for new ships as well as in the air domain, for example for planes, rail cars... More particularly, the RAMSES project deals with the noise radiated by periodically stiffened metallic structures when they are excited either by pressure fluctuations of the turbulent boundary layer or by mechanical vibrations (in a frequency range below 2kHz, for a typical submarine). The purpose is to eliminate or reduce significantly the radiation of the Bloch-Floquet waves created by the stiffener periodicity. Several solutions are proposed: (1) classical solution based on resonant systems, made of viscoelastic materials and additional masses, as those considered in the ASTRID FARAON project (Acoustic stealth by resonating stiffeners, 04/2014-09/2016, handled by Mr. Tran Van Nhieu from Thales RT) with the aim of controlling the stealth of stiffened plates or shells, (2) solution with passive metamaterials to allow for resonance frequency tuning on a wide range by simply modifying the effective properties of the metamaterials constituting the resonant systems, (3) solution with piezoelectric materials connected to a very simple electronic circuit (short circuit, open circuit or positive capacitance) with the aim of modifying by a simple external electric command the properties of each resonant system independently, (4) semi-active solutions with piezoelectric materials connected to a complex electronic circuit with a negative capacitance or a blind switch damping for instance, usually used for vibration damping or energy harvesting. The last two solutions are innovative strategies for the control of the acoustic radiation in break with the previously proposed solutions because they will allow variable jamming by modifying in real time the electric connections of the active materials. The developed analytical and numerical models will be implemented to design and optimize systems for acoustic radiation control corresponding to realistic configurations in line with naval concerns. Four plates equipped with stiffeners and resonant systems will be manufactured at the 1/100 scale and tested, in connection with each of the proposed solutions. The project will also aim at adapting the proposed solutions to periodically stiffened cylindrical shells. The skills linked with the project are analytical, numerical, as well as experimental with measurements in air and in water to estimate both plate vibration and far-field acoustic radiation reductions. Moreover, the proposed solutions present the advantage of handling both discretion and stealth simultaneously in the range of low frequencies, where the usual hull coating solutions are generally less efficient. This project is part of research topics n°3 " acoustic and radio waves" and n°2 " Fluids, structures ", and in the research priority for 2016: "new materials to optimize the radiation of antennas and stealth". The project is handled by IEMN (UMR 8520 CNRS) which has an internationally recognized expertise in passive and active metamaterials, as well as in modelling, with the help of Thales RT for the study, the choice and the manufacturing of the resonant structures, the LOMC for the manufacturing of scale models and the acoustic tests in water tank and Thales US for the finite element numerical models and for its expertise in underwater acoustics.