Davide Orlandelli, PhD student at Politecnico di Milano and QPIC1550 consortium member, was recently awarded the Best Student Presentation Award during a conference held in Łódź, Poland.

On September 18, 2025, at the International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices (NUSOD 2025), Davide presented his work on the design of a novel triple-mesa InGaAs/InP Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD). Based on simulation results, this new kind of SPAD shows promising performance: it has comparable photon detection efficiency to existing planar InGaAs/InP SPADs, while offering compatibility with heterogeneous integration with waveguides.

These devices, capable of detecting single photons, are being fabricated and will be integrated with waveguides in the framework of the QPIC1550 project.

This advancement not only addresses fabrication limits but also represents an intermediate step toward SPADs coupled with waveguides — a long-term goal of the project. In contrast, current state-of-the-art planar SPADs are not compatible with this integration process.

Congratulations to Davide for this achievement, and to the team supporting this milestone in the QPIC1550 journey toward integrated quantum photonic technologies at 1550 nm.