22nd Microoptics Conference (MOC2017), Tokyo, Japan, Nov.

19 - 22, 2017

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Silicon Photonics for Optical
Computing, Interconnects and Sensing
Ray T. Chen1,2
1
Microelectronics Research Center
The University of Texas, Austin, Texas
78758, USA
2
Omega Optics
8500 Shoel Creek Blvd.
Austin, TX 78757
Abstract:
Silicon photonics has been an active research
topic for the past twenty years. The maturity
of silicon nanofabrication and the
transparency of silicon material at C- and L-
band are a critical factor for the realization of
silicon photonics for real applications.
However, due to the intrinsic nature of
indirect bandgap, hybrid integration with
external III-V based lasers is the trend for
integration. In this talk, we will focus on
several key application areas. Figure 1 shows
the system architecture to be demonstrated
using III-V and silicon integrated photonic
devices where energy consumption and
bandwidth can be significantly improved.
Silicon CMOS compatible integrated
photonic devices provide novel applications
not only on silicon but also on a myriad of
unconventional substrates such as glass, III-
V compounds and PC boards. It will greatly
enhance applications in communications and
Figure 1 Optical Computing and Optical Interconnects to provide lower power and higher bandwidth
computing systems
© 2017 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

various sensing applications in rigid and
conformable surfaces of various platforms. In
this plenary talk, we will present intra-chip
and inter-chip optical interconnects using
silicon subwavelength gratings. Unlike
electrical interconnects, optical interconnects
provides the possibility of having three
dimensional interconnection layers with two
dimensional geometry with very low crossing
loss (0.02 dB/node experimentally
confirmed). 2D optical beam steering with
very large steering angle is demonstrated.
Further applications using defect engineered
photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) based
slow light devices provide us with an ultra-
sensitive biosensing platform for any
biomarker detection. Figure 2 shows a
generic sensing system developed.
Microfluidic channel carrying the biomarkers
and precursors are directed to the active areas
where conjugate binding will occur. The
binding events create surface index changes
and therefore the resonant peaks will be
shifted due to cavity length changes. The
shift and the magnitude of the shift will
determine the existence and the concentration
of the specific biomarkers under
consideration. Due to compact ness, up 128
markers can be detected in the same chip.
Early lung, breast and pancreatic cancer
detection results will be presented also with
high sensitivity without sacrificing
specificity. Future perspective of silicon
photonics will also presented to summarize
22nd Microoptics Conference (MOC2017), Tokyo, Japan, Nov. 19 - 22, 2017
the future scope of research. Figure 3
provides the summary of the existing
nanotechnologies with ours as a reference.
Figure 2 PCW based silicon nanophotonic chip
for biosensing and biomarker detections that
can be used for various bio-related detection;
Figure 3 The state of the art figure of merit
(FOM) for all biodetection devices and
technology based on references [1]-[12]
© 2017 The Japan Society of Applied Physics
  
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