SILICON PHOTONICS: AN EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY

This paper highlights recent progress and trends in the development of silicon photonics. Silicon photonics has been the subject of intense research activities in both industry and academia as a compelling technology paving the way for next-generation energy efficient high-speed computing, information processing, communications systems, and biosensing. The trend is to use optics in intimate proximity to the electronic circuit, which implies high level of optoelectronic integration. The goal is not only achieving high-performance in silicon photonics, but doing so at a price point that makes the technology a natural fit for all devices that consume bandwidth. Great efforts have been dedicated and various impressive results achieved in passive and active silicon photonic devices, photonic circuit integration as well as various application exploration, including waveguide structures, modulators, switches, photo detectors, resonators, sensors, sub-wavelength structures, wavelength multiplexers, spectrometers, photonic crystals, nano plasmonics, light sources, and various subsystems