ABSTRACT
Silicon waveguide circuits are promising for optical telecommunication and optical interconnections (Jalali and Fathpour, 2006). Monolithic fabrication of silicon waveguides and silicon electronics is attractive for future integration in opt-electronic circuits. Due to the high refractive index of silicon (∼3.5 at 1.5 μm wavelength), the silicon waveguide circuits can be miniaturized in area by a few orders of magnitude smaller than silica waveguide circuits. A silicon submicron-wide waveguide works as a single-mode waveguide with a bending radius as small as a few micro-meters. Several silicon submicron-wide waveguide devices, such as a waveguide splitter/coupler and microring resonator, have been studied (Janz et al., 2006; Koonath et al., 2006; Yamada et al., 2006). Combining waveguide components, complex circuits such as arrayed waveguide devices have also been studied (Sasaki et al., 2005).
