III-V-on-Silicon Integration

Silicon has long offered promise as the ultimate platform for realizing compact photonic integrated circuits (PICs). That promise stems in part from the material’s properties: the high refractive-index contrast of silicon allows strong confinement of the optical field, increasing light-matter interaction in a compact space—a particularly important attribute for realizing efficient modulators and high-speed detectors. Even more important, however, silicon photonics relies on materials and processing techniques already highly developed by the silicon CMOS industry. This means it can leverage the best tools and processes available, without the need for high additional capital investments, raising the potential for high performance at low cost.