Silicon-based photonic devices

Silicon-based photonics is an important technology direction for research and development. The payoffs from Si photonic R&D will be low-cost, reliable opto-electronic integrated circuits (OEICs) and photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that will find application in optical communications, flat panel displays, optical storage, printing, imaging, sensing, and information processing. The motivation for making Si PICs and OEICs is to attain high-yield manufacturable chips: inexpensive commercial products resulting from high-volume production on 8-inch wafers. Regarding performance, the expectation is that the functionality of Si PICs and OEICs will be equal to, or in some cases greater than, that of III-V semiconductor counterparts.