Active silicon-photonic devices based on hybrid material integration
Event details
| Date | 23.06.2011 |
| Hour | 14:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Avinoam Zadok , Bar-Ilan Uni. |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
The research field of Silicon Photonics pursues the implementation of optical communication and processing functionalities, such as the generation, modulation, guiding and detection of light, within the silicon material platform. The field is driven by the promise of potentially mass-produced, low-cost devices, and the possibility of integrating photonics and electronics together on single chips. Interest in silicon photonics has increased further in recent years, due to the need to support high-rate communication among parallel computer processes. Silicon has several favorable material properties for the implementation of passive photonic devices, such as waveguides and linear filters. On the other hand, the development of active photonic devices in silicon is held back by several material drawbacks, such as an indirect bandgap, absence of an electro-optic effect, strong two-photon absorption at telecommunication wavelength and relatively long lifetimes of injected carriers. Nevertheless, several solution paths have been proposed and demonstrated in the realization of silicon-integrated light sources, modulators and telecommunication wavelength detectors. Many such demonstrations rely on hybrid devices, which bring together silicon and another electro-optic material of more favorable properties, such as germanium or InP and GaAs alloys. The primary technological challenge in the fabrication of such devices has to do with wafer-bonding of the two dissimilar materials. The talk begins with an introduction to the underlying motivation to silicon photonics research, and the properties of silicon as an optical medium. Several examples of passive silicon photonic devices are provided. Next, emphasis is given to active devices such as light sources, modulators and detectors, with examples of hybrid integrated devices by several groups. The fabrication and characterization of a hybrid silicon / InP laser diode are described in detail. Lastly, a new and promising approach to the bonding of dissimilar materials is described, based on the deposition of self-assembled organic molecular monolayers.
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