ABSTRACT

Silicon (Si) photonics is the science and technology of using the group-IV element of the periodic table as the principle material for optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs). Silicon has long had photonic applications. The so-called planar lightwave circuits (PLC) are fairly inexpensive, easy to process, and low loss. However, the low-contrast passive devices on dielectrics are very bulky, cannot be bent at short radii without significant loss, and cannot be manipulated electrically for active devices like modulators and detectors. In one of the very first Si waveguides, the carrier plasma effect was exploited to create a bottom cladding layer for optical waveguides. Optical waveguides are the most fundamental devices for any integrated photonic technology. Perhaps the most important active silicon-on-insulator (SOI) device operating on similar device architectures is optical modulators. Since the early 1990s, several approaches have been pursued to increase the quantum efficiency of luminescence in bulk Si.