UK Silicon Photonics

硅光子学是一个在过去5年中快速增长和发生巨大变化的领域。麻省理工学院通信技术路线图旨在建立一个跨市场部门的通用架构平台，年收入可能达到200亿美元。根据该路线图，硅光子学是十大新兴技术之一。这在一定程度上是由于最近美国大型半导体公司的参与，如英特尔和IBM，他们已经意识到该技术的巨大潜力，以及美国DARPA在电子和光子集成电路（EPIC）倡议下对该领域的大量投资。日本、韩国以及欧盟（IMEC和LETI）也对该技术进行了大量投资。该技术提供了一个机会，以适度的成本提供卓越的性能，从而彻底改变一系列应用领域，这主要是因为硅是一种经过彻底研究的材料，并且由于微电子工业数十年的投资，其制造质量无与伦比，产量非常高。拟议的工作是英国5所大学（萨里大学、圣安德鲁斯大学、利兹大学、华威大学和南安普顿大学）与英国和美国工业部门的合作。我们将主要针对互连应用，因为基于硅基工艺的可扩展性，它们在全球范围内受到最多关注，并具有最大的财富创造潜力。但是，我们将确保我们的方法更广泛地适用于其他应用程序。这可以通过靶向通用的设备功能来实现，并且仅在靶向特定应用时引入特异性。我们设想的通用器件功能如下：光调制；光纤到亚微米硅波导的耦合；亚微米波导内光信号的接口光学滤波;光学/电子集成;光学检测;光学放大。在这些领域中，我们建议设计、制造和测试将提高当前技术水平的设备。随后，我们将把这些光学器件与电子器件集成在一起，以进一步提高硅中光学/电子集成的技术水平。我们在我们的目标清单中列入了我们提出的每一种设备的基准指标，以明确和毫不含糊地说明雄心和意图。我们相信，我们已经组建了一个优秀的财团来完成拟议的工作，并使英国能够在国际层面上竞争。技能和专业知识的结合在英国是独一无二的，在财团内完全互补。此外，该联盟的每个成员都被认为是各自领域的国际领先研究人员。这项工作的结果有可能对英国和世界各地的财富创造机会产生非常重大的影响。例如，芯片内和芯片间的光互连、板对板和机架对机架以及用于互联网和其他大带宽应用的光纤到户等新兴应用，将需要高成本效益和大规模生产解决方案。如果能够实现合适的性能，硅光子学将被视为这些应用领域的领先候选技术。

Silicon Photonics is a field that has seen rapid growth and dramatic changes in the past 5 years. According to the MIT Communications Technology Roadmap, which aims to establish a common architecture platform across market sectors with a potential $20B in annual revenue, silicon photonics is among the top ten emerging technologies. This has in part been a consequence of the recent involvement of large semiconductor companies in the USA such as Intel and IBM, who have realised the enormous potential of the technology, as well as large investment in the field by DARPA in the USA under the Electronic and Photonic Integrated Circuit (EPIC) initiative. Significant investment in the technology has also followed in Japan, Korea, and to a lesser extent in the European Union (IMEC and LETI). The technology offers an opportunity to revolutionise a range of application areas by providing excellent performance at moderate cost due primarily to the fact that silicon is a thoroughly studied material, and unsurpassed in quality of fabrication with very high yield due to decades of investment from the microelectronics industry. The proposed work is a collaboration between 5 UK Universities (Surrey, St. Andrews, Leeds, Warwick and Southampton) with input from the industrial sector both in the UK and the USA. We will target primarily the interconnect applications, as they are receiving the most attention worldwide and have the largest potential for wealth creation, based on the scalability of silicon-based processes. However, we will ensure that our approach is more broadly applicable to other applications. This can be achieved by targeting device functions that are generic, and introducing specificity only when a particular application is targeted. The generic device functions we envisage are as follows: Optical modulation; coupling from fibre to sub-micron silicon waveguides; interfacing of optical signals within sub micron waveguides; optical filtering; optical/electronic integration; optical detection; optical amplification. In each of these areas we propose to design, fabricate, and test devices that will improve the current state of the art. Subsequently we will integrate these optical devices with electronics to further improve the state of the art in optical/electronic integration in silicon.We have included in our list of objectives, benchmark targets for each of our proposed devices to give a clear and unequivocal statement of ambition and intent.We believe we have assembled an excellent consortium to deliver the proposed work, and to enable the UK to compete on an international level. The combination of skills and expertise is unique in the UK and entirely complementary within the consortium. Further, each member of the consortium is recognised as a leading international researcher in their field.The results of this work have the potential to have very significant impact to wealth creation opportunities within the UK and around the world. For example emerging applications such as optical interconnect, both intra-chip, and inter-chip, as well as board to board and rack to rack, and Fibre To The Home for internet and other large bandwidth applications, will require highly cost effective and mass production solutions. Silicon Photonics is a seen as a leading candidate technology in these application areas if suitable performance can be achieved.