Silicon Photonics: A Review

Abstract

Previously, researchers were trying to replace the copper wires with the optical technology. They used photons instead of electrons to carry out the data within machines. The future of IC industry depends upon the speed and bandwidth requirements, but in metallic interconnections we have constraints on speed as well as bandwidth. With the advancement in computer technology we are now more dependent upon ultra fast data transfer rate between and within chips. Now, we can achieve high speeds with the use of optics, and if we integrate the optical components on a single silicon chip then it would allow the data to flow at a higher speed. This paper reviews the growth of silicon photonics compared to last few years and a promising future of photonics. Intel Corporation first announced its major breakthrough in 2004 based on silicon photonics (Moore's law). They developed a modulator based on silicon that operates at 50GHz. It was 50 times faster than the previous invention. In 2008 Intel declared that the data transfer rate can be increased further up to 1Tbps (bits per second).compatibility of silicon photonics with CMOS fabrication offers great advantages, such as low cost, high volume integration. Keywords - Silicon, Modulators, Mach-Zehnder, SiGe, Detectors, Lasers, Avalanche Photodetector