Integrated Photonic Crystal Devices for Optical Interconnect Applications

The amount of information that can be handled by computers is increasing every year. In order to satisfy this growing demand, computers need to augment the number of components in a chip and, at the same time, operate at higher speeds. This is leading long electrical interconnects to reach their limits in terms of speed and power dissipation, motivating the search of new alternatives. One of the alternatives is to use optical interconnects, because they can operate at very high speeds, dissipate less power and are more immune to electrical interference. On the other hand, optical circuits in these optical interconnect systems cannot be much larger than their electronic counterparts, what opens an opportunity for photonic crystal circuits, due to their great potential to reduce dimensions in integrated optical circuits technology. In this presentation, we analyze a few photonic crystal devices which target optical interconnect applications.