Invited Paper Recent Advances in Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits John E. Bowers*, Tin Komljenovic, Michael Davenport, Jared Hulme, Alan Y. Liu, Christos T. Santis, Alexander Spott, Sudharsanan Srinivasan, Eric J. Stanton, Chong Zhang Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA *
[email protected] ABSTRACT We review recent breakthroughs in silicon photonics technology and components and describe progress in silicon photonic integrated circuits. Heterogeneous silicon photonics has recently demonstrated performance that significantly outperforms native III-V components. The impact active silicon photonic integrated circuits could have on interconnects, telecommunications, sensors and silicon electronics is reviewed. Keywords: Heterogeneous silicon platform, integrated optoelectronics, optoelectronic devices, semiconductor lasers, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, silicon photonics 1. INTRODUCTION Heterogeneous silicon photonics, due to its potential for medium- and large-scale integration, has been intensively researched. Recent developments have shown that heterogeneous integration not only allows for a reduced cost due to economy of scale, but also allows for same or even better performing devices than what has previously been demonstrated utilizing only III-V materials. Furthermore we believe that optical interconnects are the only way to solve the scaling limitation in modern processors, and that heterogeneous silicon photonics with on-chip sources is the best approach in the long term as it promises higher efficiency and lower cost. We address both beliefs in sections that follow. In this paper we plan to briefly address heterogeneous silicon approaches, and point-out that the heterogeneous silicon platform is more than just III-V on silicon but can have advantages for isolators, circulators and nonlinear devices (Section 2).