Inverse Design Software Automates Design Process for Optical, Nanophotonic Structures

A research team at Stanford University has created an inverse design codebase called SPINS that can help researchers explore different design methodologies to find fabricable optical and nanophotonic structures. Integrated photonics has many potential applications, ranging from optical interconnects to sensing to quantum computing. “The idea of inverse design is to use more sophisticated optimization algorithms and automate the search for a structure,” researcher Logan Su explained. “The ultimate goal is to have a designer input their desired performance metrics and simply wait for the algorithm to generate the best possible device.” Photonic inverse design produces an assortment of nonintuitive designs...