A Review of the Building Blocks of Silicon Photonics: From Fabrication Perspective

Silicon photonics is a disruptive semiconductor technology that taps into the extraordinary properties of light while taking full advantage of the already matured CMOS processes developed in the semiconductor industry. However, just like electronic industry in the 1970s, currently, Silicon Photonics is in its infancy. The fundamental building blocks of silicon photonics such as waveguides, lasers, modulators, etc. are yet to be fully optimized for low-cost-mass-manufacturing. In this paper, the current state-of-the-art related to developing and optimizing these aforementioned key components will be presented. The challenges of process integration regarding Silicon photonics will also be discussed.