Silicon photonics for microelectronic optical interconnects

Silicon integrated photonics has attracted much attentions recently because of the available of silicon-based quantum devices and optical components. The successful development of Si integrated photonics will enable on-chip optical interconnects for future microprocessors and giga-scale circuits. It will be one of the major steps for next technology revolution. Technology for making micro optical waveguides based on CMOS process has been developed and there are several proposals were given for making Si-based light sources. This talk reviews some attempts reported recently for making waveguide and light emitting devices based on the conventional CMOS processes. Special emphasis was placed on the on-chip optical interconnects applications.