Silicon photonic integrated devices and circuits have offered a promising means to revolutionalize information processing and computing technologies. One important reason is that these devices are compatible with conventional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processing technology that overwhelms current microelectronics industry. Yet, the dream to build optical computers has yet to come without the breakthrough of several key elements including optical diodes, isolators, and logic gates with low power, high signal contrast, and large bandwidth. Photonic crystal has a great power to mold the flow of light in micrometer/nanometer scale and is a promising platform for optical integration. In this paper we present our recent efforts of design, fabrication, and characterization of ultracompact, linear, passive on-chip optical diodes, isolators and logic gates based on silicon two-dimensional photonic crystal slabs. Both simulation and experiment results show high performance of these novel designed devices. These linear and passive silicon devices have the unique properties of small fingerprint, low power request, large bandwidth, fast response speed, easy for fabrication, and being compatible with COMS technology. Further improving their performance would open up a road towards photonic logics and optical computing and help to construct nanophotonic on-chip processor architectures for future optical computers.

Date Published: 21 December 2013
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 9047, 2013 International Conference on Optical Instruments and Technology: Micro/Nano Photonics and Fabrication, 904709 (21 December 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2047794

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9047:
2013 International Conference on Optical Instruments and Technology: Micro/Nano Photonics and Fabrication
Zhiping Zhou; Changhe Zhou; Zhiping Zhou, Editor(s)