Design and application of highly integrated optical switches based on silicon photonics

Silicon photonics is promising for integrating various functional optical devices according to applications. Here we discuss the possibility of applying silicon photonics devices to optical path switching in wide area photonic network nodes. System design including optical switches and device design for implementing silicon photonics based optical switch are discussed. We integrate thermo-optical switch elements based on silicon optical waveguides into a compact one-chip device as a 8 × 8 optical switch. We demonstrate its capabilities such as high extinction ratio operation independently of polarization and ambient temperature, which are considered a critical step toward real application.