High Performance Photonics on Silicon

Using silicon for optical interconnects would enable a platform for such a monolithic integration of optics and microelectronics. Photonics on silicon has been suggested since the 1980's. The challenge of using silicon as a photonic platform is the lack of strong active devices in silicon rich modulators, switches and detectors. Photodetectors on silicon with high performance are the one key node that remains to be demonstrated to enable photonic interconnections on a microelectronic chip. Optical switches for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) are key components for all optical networks on chip. Silicon photonics has attained much attention in recent years owing to the maturity of silicon in the electronic industry and its possibility to combine both photonic and electronic devices all on one chip.