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Merits and Potential Impact of Silicon Photonics

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Silicon Photonics III

Part of the book series: Topics in Applied Physics ((TAP,volume 122))

Abstract

In this chapter, we review the technical merits of silicon photonic devices and integrated circuits, which have benefited from high-index-contrast silicon waveguides, a high integration level of various optical functions on the same chip, and mature complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication techniques. These technical merits assure silicon photonics as a disruptive optical technology that will achieve low-cost and compact optical modules for data communications, with applications such as chip-scale optical interconnects, short-reach communications in datacenters and supercomputers, and metro/long-haul optical transmissions. We discuss various applications in these fields, which may benefit from implementation in silicon photonics. In particular, we review silicon photonic circuits for wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmitters, WDM receivers, coherent optical transmitters and coherent receivers, which all require photonic integration to reduce the cost and module size.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, 791 Holmdel Road, Holmdel, NJ, 07733, USA

    Po Dong & David T. Neilson

  2. III-V Lab a joint lab of ‘Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France’ ‘Thales Research and Technology’ and ‘CEA Leti’, Campus Polytechnique, 1, Avenue a. Fresnel, 91767, Palaiseau cedex, France

    Guang-Hua Duan

  3. Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ, 07974, USA

    Young-Kai Chen

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  1. Po Dong
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  2. Guang-Hua Duan
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  4. David T. Neilson
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Correspondence to Po Dong .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nanoscience Laboratory, University of Trento, Department of Physics, Povo, Italy

    Lorenzo Pavesi

  2. Measurement Science and Standards, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    David J. Lockwood

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Dong, P., Duan, GH., Chen, YK., Neilson, D.T. (2016). Merits and Potential Impact of Silicon Photonics. In: Pavesi, L., Lockwood, D. (eds) Silicon Photonics III. Topics in Applied Physics, vol 122. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10503-6_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10503-6_14

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