Emerging Trends in On-Chip Photonic Integration Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

The invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 (Jack Kilby, Nobel Prize in Physics 2000) allowed the integration of active and passive electronic components on the same semiconductor chip, which, with the subsequent IC transistor count exponential growth predicted by Moore’s Law, led to the rise of the modern microelectronic industry in the second half of the twentieth century. Similarly, photonic integration of multiple active and passive optical elements in the Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) approach can also significantly reduce the photonic system size and power consumption, improving performance compared to discrete photonic chip solutions. In both component count per chip and aggregate transmission data capacity, state-of-the-art PIC chip laboratory results have also followed an exponential growth curve over the past three decades, similar to Moore’s Law in the electronic industry.

On the other hand, mainstream commercial photonic chip technology today is still mainly dominated by discrete optical components, primarily driven by manufacturing yield, cost and reliability concerns. Several parallel photonic integration technology paths are also being investigated by both the academic and industrial communities, including III-V photonic monolithic integration, silicon photonics heterogeneous integration, and more recently Lithium Niobate on Insulator (LNOI) integration. Market forces will ultimately determine the winner.

This Special Issue aims at presenting original state-of-the-art research articles covering a broad range of topics involving photonic chip integration technologies and their industrial applications. Papers are solicited involving fundamental material, integration process and packaging research, novel photonic device designs, diverse areas of photonic integration applications, and finally their manufacturability and yield issues in the commercial world. Researchers are invited to submit their original contributions to this Special Issue. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• InP and novel III-V material PIC;
• Silicon photonics integration technology;
• LNOI integration technology;
• Photonic chip and packaging technology for high-speed optical data I/O;
• Terahertz integrated photonic chips;
• Quantum dot laser on silicon;
• High-performance integrated photonic chips for optical metrology and sensing;
• Biophotonics and biomedical engineering;
• Nanotechnology and nanochips;
• Commercial application and manufacturing issues of integrated photonic chips.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Chen Ji
Prof. Dr. Chaoyuan Jin
Dr. Fei Guo
Dr. Ronald G. Broeke
Guest Editors

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