Silicon photonics technologies for monolithic electronic-photonic integrated circuit

Abstract

Severe information latency and power consumption are key technology challenges facing the traditional copper interconnects which impose tremendous constraints to keep up with the performance roadmap driven by the Moore's Law. Converging electronic and photonic integrated circuits (EPIC) on a single chip platform to enable functional diversification emerges as one promising approach which could be realized by taking the advantage of low energy and huge data capacity of optical interconnects. By leveraging on the wealth of CMOS technology know-how and infrastructures, the fundamental photonics building blocks constructing the EPIC platform have been successfully developed in this work. We present an overview on the current status of this critical technology development and provide an outlook for the monolithic integration of Si micro- and nano-photonics. It is our belief that a seamless integration of EPIC is poised to become a promising technology to meet the bandwidth and energy requirements of future data communication.