Silicon photonics: optical modulators

Abstract

Silicon Photonics has the potential to revolutionise a whole raft of application areas. Currently, the main focus is on various forms of optical interconnects as this is a near term bottleneck for the computing industry, and hence a number of companies have also released products onto the market place. The adoption of silicon photonics for mass production will significantly benefit a range of other application areas. One of the key components that will enable silicon photonics to flourish in all of the potential application areas is a high performance optical modulator. An overview is given of the major Si photonics modulator research that has been pursued at the University of Surrey to date as well as a worldwide state of the art showing the trend and technology available. We will show the trend taken toward integration of optical and electronic components with the difficulties that are inherent in such a technology. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.