E-raamat: Silicon Photonics for Telecommunications and Biomedicine

"Focusing on the important obstacles to be met in order to make silicon photonics a viable commercial reality, this book provides a concise introduction to major developments in the field. Worldwide experts provide clear explanations of the fundamentals and state-of-the-art approaches. After a historical review, the text discusses the critical areas of silicon wire waveguides and optical parametric effects in silicon, stress and piezoelectric tuning of silicon's optical properties, and short pulse techniques in silicon photonics. It also addresses silicon-based optical resonators, mid-wavelength infrared applications, growth techniques, hybrid lasers on silicon, and energy harvesting. "--

"Today, silicon photonics, the technology for building low-cost and complex optics on a chip, is a thriving community and a blossoming business. The roots of this promising new technology date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s to the work of Soref, Peterman, and others. There were three early findings that paved the path for much of the subsequent progress. First, it was recognized that micrometer-size waveguides, compatible with the CMOS technology of the time, could be realized despite the large refractive index difference between silicon and silicon dioxide (SiO2). Previously, this large refractive index was thought to result in multimode waveguides that are undesirable for building useful interferometric devices such as directional coupler, Mach-Zehnder modulators, and so on. Although, today's submicron (nanophotonic) waveguides are routinely realized and desired for their more efficient use of wafer real estate, the advance fabrication capability needed to fabricate such structures was not widely available to photonic device researchers. Second, it was proposed by Soref that by modulating the free-carrier density, which can be done easily with a diode or a transistor, electro-optic switching can be achieved through the resulting electroabsorption and electrorefraction effects. Third, it was shown that infrared photodectors operating in the telecommunication band centered at 1550 nm can be monolithically integrated onto silicon chips using strained layer GeSi (and eventually Ge) grown directly on silicon. The potential for creating low cost photonics using the silicon CMOS chip manufacturing infrastructure was gradually recognized by the photonics research and business community in the late 1990s and early 2000s"--

Electrical engineers complement rather than replace earlier studies of the technology for building low-cost and complex optics in a chip. Balancing theory and experiment with current and future trends, they consider such topics as silicon plasmonic waveguides, stress and piezoelectric tuning of silicon's optical properties, silicon photonics for biosensing applications, mid-wavelength infrared silicon photonics for high-power and biomedical applications, and nonlinear photovoltaics and energy harvesting. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Given silicon’s versatile material properties, use of low-cost silicon photonics continues to move beyond light-speed data transmission through fiber-optic cables and computer chips. Its application has also evolved from the device to the integrated-system level. A timely overview of this impressive growth, Silicon Photonics for Telecommunications and Biomedicine summarizes state-of-the-art developments in a wide range of areas, including optical communications, wireless technologies, and biomedical applications of silicon photonics.

With contributions from world experts, this reference guides readers through fundamental principles and focuses on crucial advances in making commercial use of silicon photonics a viable reality in the telecom and biomedical industries. Taking into account existing and anticipated industrial directions, the book balances coverage of theory and practical experimental research to explore solutions for obstacles to the viable commercialization of silicon photonics.

The book’s special features include:

• A section on silicon plasmonic waveguides
• Detailed coverage of novel III-V applications
• A chapter on 3D integration
• Discussion of applications for energy harvesting/photovoltaics

This book reviews the most important technological trends and challenges. It presents topics involving major silicon photonics applications in telecommunications, high-power photonics, and biomedicine. It includes discussion of silicon plasmonic waveguides, piezoelectric tuning of silicon’s optical properties, and applications of two-photon absorption. Expert authors with industry research experience examine the challenge of hybridizing III-V compound semiconductors on silicon to achieve monolithic light sources. They also address economic compatibility and heat dissipation issues in CMOS chips, challenges in designing electronic photonics integrated circuits, and the need for standardization in computer-aided design of industrial chips.

This book gives an authoritative summary of the latest research in this emerging field, covering key topics for readers from various disciplines with an interest in integrated photonics.