Hybrid and Heterogeneous Integration on Photonic Circuits: New Opportunities for Multifunctional Photonic Platforms

Dear Colleagues,

The field of Silicon Photonics has rapidly evolved over the last few years, supported by the gain in maturity of the technology, design tools, and methods employed. The quest for new ideas and concepts to deploy low-cost, compact, and power-efficient photonic circuits with a high wafer yield and robustness that are able to meet the requirements in several application domains has triggered a frenetic activity worldwide. Presently, photonic circuit technology has diversified its number of available platforms. Despite the fact that indium phosphide (InP) and silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platforms are still considered as the warhorses of integrated photonics in terms of maturity and deployment of active (InP) and passive (SOI) components, other alternatives such as germanium-on-silicon, silicon nitride-on-insulator or hybrid solutions combining different functional materials and Si are gaining momentum. A representative example is the hybrid III-V/Si platform, which has been used to develop on-chip tunable lasers for wavelength division multiplexing purposes.

Indeed, the possibility to integrate several materials in a single photonic technology represents an attractive playground scenario to explore novel functionalities not available before in monolithic approaches. In this regard, the implementation of multifunctional photonic circuits that collect, transmit or reconfigure data in real-time conditions while interacting with their environment may open the route for a new class of photonic circuits with a wide range of possibilities and applications.  

This Special Issue will focus on recent advancements on hybrid and heterogeneous photonic circuits spanning from materials, processing techniques, and implementation of novel components, devices, and circuits employing diverse materials to enable multifunctional photonic platforms. With a combination of invited and contributed papers, this issue will survey the state-of-the-art of hybrid and heterogeneous photonic circuit technology.

Dr. Joan Manel Ramírez
Guest Editor

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