On the use of silicon photonics--Part I

As today's complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies are scaled down to below 65 nm, conventional metal lines carrying signals in an integrated circuit face increasing challenges. As a short-term solution, the semiconductor industry adopted copper instead of aluminum for interconnects due to its low resistive behavior and good electromigration property. However, issues such as delay degradation, interference, and power dissipation will remain for metal interconnects as we further scale down feature sizes.