Application prospect of metal-oxide-semiconductor silicon light emitting devices in integrated circuits

Photonic interconnects have potentials to break increasingly severe energy efficiency and bandwidth density bottlenecks of electrical interconnect in scaled complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits, leading to the emergence of optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs) that utilize electronic and photonic devices together in a synergistic way to achieve better performance than those based on pure electronic device technology. By reviewing the progresses of Si-based light-emitting device, the schematic of MOS-like light source integrated with waveguides and the following photodetector is analyzed for its availability. It is believed that on-chip optical interconnects could be achieved by standard CMOS technology successfully with the speed as fast as the velocity of light, supplying propulsions for nest-generation OEICs.