Electronic Materials Group (EMAT)

The Electronic Materials Research Group at MIT (EMAT) is the research laboratory led by Lionel C. Kimerling, Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, Jurgen Michel, Senior Research Scientist, and Anu Agarwal, Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Materials Research Lab/ Microphotonics Center.

EMAT actively explores silicon-based microphotonics. Microphotonics is the control of light at the micron scale using integrated devices built in silicon or a variant of silicon such as silicon nitride, silicon carbide, or silicon dioxide. So why are we the electronic materials group if we work in photonics? Silicon-based microphotonics is a technology that promotes the convergence of electronic and optical devices to produce integrated solutions for application-specific problems, such as signal interconnection, signal sensing and image sensing. Therefore we're the electronic materials group but we work at the intersection of photonics and electronics. Check out our "What do we do?" and "Projects" pages to get a better feel for what we're all about.

You can also check out our "People" pages to learn more about the folks that make EMAT go on a daily basis, or take a look at our "Publications" section to see a regularly updated list of most recent work. Finally, there are many other entities we're related to, associated with, or in fact are in charge of, so here's a few links if you want to learn more about them as well: