%0 Journal Article
%T Hybrid Materials for Integrated Photonics
%A Paolo Bettotti
%J Advances in Optics
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/891395
%X In this review materials and technologies of the hybrid approach to integrated photonics (IP) are addressed. IP is nowadays a mature technology and is the most promising candidate to overcome the main limitations that electronics is facing due to the extreme level of integration it has achieved. IP will be based on silicon photonics in order to exploit the CMOS compatibility and the large infrastructures already available for the fabrication of devices. But silicon has severe limits especially concerning the development of active photonics: its low efficiency in photons emission and the limited capability to be used as modulator require finding suitable materials able to fulfill these fundamental tasks. Furthermore there is the need to define standardized processes to render these materials compatible with the CMOS process and to fully exploit their capabilities. This review describes the most promising materials and technological approaches that are either currently implemented or may be used in the coming future to develop next generations of hybrid IP devices. 1. Introduction Photonics is a pervasive technology with a widespread number of technological applications [1]. All around us we are surrounded by photonic devices: from the monitor you are probably using to read this paper to the fluorescent (or LED) lamp that illuminates the room you are sitting in. Nowadays photonics is the leading technology in broadband long range communication systems and is the only foreseen solution to support the exponential increase of Internet traffic in the coming years [2]. For short link lengths and smaller bandwidths, electronic systems are still more efficient than the photonic paradigm [3] but Integrated Photonics (IP) is steadily pushing the limit where photonics becomes competitive with electronics to shorter and shorter distances as demonstrated by the commercialization of the first all-optical links for board to board connections. Both Corning and Sumitomo released optical cables compatible with the Thunderbolt technology that achieve the impressive bandwidth of 10£¿Gb/s. These cables use optoelectronic interfaces to convert electrical into optical signals and viceversa and are fully transparent for the end user. It is expected that, in the near future, similar standard will be available for intraboard and chip to chip systems. Ideally photonics is a much more efficient platform to develop communication systems: photons do not interact with each other in linear regime; they do not dissipate heat along the transmission line and logical operation may be
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ao/2014/891395/