VLSI photonics: Science and engineering of micro/nano-photonic integration

This paper presents an overview of our work on the theory, design, fabrication, and integration of micro and nano-scale optical wires and devices for generic and application specific VLSI photonic integrated circuits. We use micro- and nano-wires, micro-resonators, plasmonic wires, photonic crystals, and metamaterials as the basic building blocks of the photonic integrated circuits and analyze the mismatch problems of various combinations of these building blocks in terms of material mismatch, size mismatch, shape mismatch, mode mismatch, polarization mismatch, refractive index mismatch, and thermal/mechanical mismatch. We then design and integrate the micro/nano-wires and micro/nano-devices for various functions for telecommunications such as wavelength filters, splitters, power splitters, polarization splitters as applicable for switches, modulators, sensors, wavelength management devices, and polarization devices. The paper discusses scientific and engineering issues of miniaturization, interfacing, and integrating micro/nano-scale photonic devices of small and ultra-small dimensions for a very large scale integration density circuit application. Global and historical perspectives are given and some examples of recent progresses are presented.