The most recent impetus for the convergence of photonics and silicon integrated circuit technology has been the looming communications bottleneck associated with chip-to-chip and on-chip high-speed data transfer. Whilst there have been significant separate improvements in the materials and technologies for both integrated optics and integrated electronics, there is now a real commercial interest in putting these pieces together to achieve functional circuits that take advantage of both technologies. It is the purpose of this paper to review the recent developments in both microelectronics and photonics that are causing these fields to merge in the area of on-chip and off-chip data links.

Date Published: 1 March 2006
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 6125, Silicon Photonics, 612504 (1 March 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.647033

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6125:
Silicon Photonics
Joel A. Kubby; Graham T. Reed, Editor(s)