%0 Journal Article
%T Recent Progress in Silicon Photonics: A Review
%A Zhou Fang
%A Ce Zhou Zhao
%J ISRN Optics
%D 2012
%R 10.5402/2012/428690
%X With the increasing bandwidth requirement in computing and signal processing, the inherent limitations in metallic interconnection are seriously threatening the future of traditional IC industry. Silicon photonics can provide a low-cost approach to overcome the bottleneck of the high data rate transmission by replacing the original electronic integrated circuits with photonic integrated circuits. Although the commercial promise has not been realized, this perspective gives huge impetus to the development of silicon photonics these years. This paper provides an overview of the progress and the state of the art of each component in silicon photonics, including waveguides, filters, modulators, detectors, and lasers, mainly in the last five years. 1. Introduction Silicon (Si) has been the mainstay of the electronics industry for more than 40 years and once revolutionized the way the world operates. By employing more precise lithography technology and multicore structures, the development of processors can still barely follow the Moore¡¯s law. However, with increasing requirement of bandwidth, the parasitic effects in current metallic interconnection have gradually become a main obstacle for further improvements, since electric signal attenuation and power dissipation rise dramatically with higher data rate. To overcome the bottleneck of the high data rate transmission, one possible solution could be employing optical interconnect, in which the information signals are carried by photons instead. Compared with electrons, photons have zero rest mass and zero charge, which means that they can travel at velocity of light without the interference with electromagnetic field, so optical systems can theoretically achieve signal transmission with much higher data rate and better stability than electrical system. Therefore, it is highly desirable to replace traditional electrical circuits with optical circuits, and, under these motivations, a popular subject, called optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC), has been built since late 1980s. Si has an apparent window from the wavelength of 1100£¿nm to 7000£¿nm approximately, which is far from being limited to the near-infrared (IR) communication band of 1300¨C1550£¿nm. Some excellent optical properties, like large optical damage threshold and thermal conductivity, also appear in Si. Furthermore, today¡¯s mature complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) techniques could also allow low-cost, large-scale manufacturing for Si photonic devices. All of these reasons select Si as a remarkable candidate for photonics. The
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.optics/2012/428690/