Currently it is becoming very important to enhance the capacity of single-wavelength carrier by introducing multiplexed channels carried by multiple guided-modes as well as dual polarizations in optical interconnects. For the realization of mode-division-multiplexing (MDM) and polarization-division-multiplexing (PDM), one of the keys is the realization of efficient mode/polarization-manipulation. Accordingly, it is desired to develop various high-performance photonic integrated devices for mode/polarization-manipulation-on-chip. Silicon photonics provides an attractive option for realizing ultra-compact photonics integrated devices and has been developed very successfully. Great progresses has been made on the development of silicon photonic devices for mode/polarization-manipulation-on-chip, which is reviewed in this paper.
Thermal effect plays a key role and has been utilized for various photonic devices. For silicon photonics, the thermal effect is usually important because of the large thermo-optical coefficient of silicon material. This paper gives a review for the utilization of thermal effects for silicon photonics. First, the thermal effect is very beneficial to realize energy-efficient silicon photonic devices with tunability/switchability (including switches, variable optical attenuators, etc). Traditionally metal micro-heater sitting on a buried silicon-on-insulator (SOI) nanowire is used to introduce a phase shift for thermal tunability by injecting a electrical current. An effective way to improve the energy-efficiency of thermal tuning is reducing the volume of the optical waveguide as well as the micro-heater. Our recent work on silicon nanophotonic waveguides with novel nano-heaters based on metal wires as well as graphene ribbons will be summarized. Second, the thermal resistance effect of the metal strip on a hybrid plasmonic waveguide structure can be utilized to realize an ultra-small on-chip photodetector available for an ultra-broad band of wavelength, which will also be discussed.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.