Silicon photonics developments in Europe

Silicon photonics have generated an increasing interest in the recent year, mainly for optical telecommunications or for optical interconnects in microelectronic circuits. The rationale of silicon photonics is the reduction of the cost of photonic systems through the integration of photonic components and an IC on a common chip, or in the longer term, the enhancement of IC performance with the introduction of optics inside a high performance chip. In order to build a Opto-Electronic Integrated circuit (OEIC), different European project has been launched in Europe. The PICMOS project demonstrated the full optical link on a silicon circuit with InP bonded devices. The following WADIMOS project goes a step further with the demonstration of an optical network on chip with WDM µlaser for on-chip intraconnection between IC cores. The UK silicon photonics project and the European HELIOS project are focalized on telecommunications devices with the aim of photonics and electronics integration which can be done either by wafer bonding of an SOI photonic circuit or by low temperature fabrication of a photonic layer at the metallization levels. Recent development on building blocks will be reported such as low loss couplers, Si and InP µdisk modulators, high speed Ge or InGaAs photodetectors.