Photonics

Summary

Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Photonics is closely related to quantum electronics, where quantum electronics deals with the theoretical part of it while photonics deal with its engineering applications. Though covering all light's technical applications over the whole spectrum, most photonic applications are in the range of visible and near-infrared light. The term photonics developed as an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s and optical fibers developed in the 1970s. History The word 'Photonics' is derived from the Greek word "phos" meaning light (which has genitive case "photos" and in compound words the root "photo-" is used); it appeared in the late 1960s to describe a research field whose goal

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photonics

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Like integrated electronics, integrated photonics such as Silicon Photonics benefit from increased device-density on a single chip. Silicon is an excellent material for integrated photonics because its high refractive index allows devices to be made small, and the established silicon CMOS fabrication infrastructure provides a convenient route towards scaling up production. However, standard Silicon Photonics faces a bottleneck in scaling up device-density due to excessive power consumption and high optical losses associated with individual devices. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) provide a unique solution to this problem by providing a physical redistribution of optical media to perform the necessary active functions in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) with minimal power consumption and low loss.This thesis tackles two important aspects needed for implementing large-scale MEMS-enabled PICs in silicon. First, the required microfabrication processes are developed for the first-time, by full process integration of MEMS in an established foundry platform, the Interuniversity Microelectronic Centre's (IMEC) iSiPP50G Silicon Photonics technology. By demonstrating MEMS-compatibility, the barrier to adopting this new technology is reduced, and the devices and circuits themselves benefit from co-integration with high-performance standard components. Second, a new class of electrostatic MEMS-enabled photonic building blocks are designed, simulated, and experimentally characterized. Demonstrated devices include a set of remarkably broadband (bandwidth > 80 nm) tunable couplers capable of continuous optical power tuning between output ports to produce extinction ratios greater than 20 dB with minimal insertion loss (reaching < 0.4 dB). In terms of switching, a very low-voltage, six-port count device and a particularly compact (65 um x 62 um) photonic MEMS switch with sub-microsecond switching time are also presented. Further MEMS-enabled functionality is demonstrated with a wavelength-selective add-drop filter and a discussion of phase-shifters and multi-device sub-circuits. These components can be repeated and combined with one another to create complex and reconfigurable networks, and therefore represent an essential stepping stone towards the realization of very large-scale PICs. Together, these key developments in microfabrication and device design promise PIC designers MEMS-enabled photonic components as standard elements in their circuits to efficiently implement functions such as switching, tuning, and filtering for application in photonic switch matrices, weighted interconnects for neural networks, and programmable PICs.

EPFL2021

16-Core Recirculating Programmable Si Photonic MEMS

Niels Quack, Alain Yuji Takabayashi

We report on a 16-core recirculating programmable photonic array based on MEMS-tunable directional couplers. The photonic array has a compact footprint (0.04mm(2)/cell) and negligible static power consumption. Waveguide-coupled single-ring resonators, CROWs, and add-drop filters are demonstrated. (C) 2021 The Author(s)

IEEE2021

Advanced Diamond Microfabrication for Microoptics and Photonics

Marcell Kristof Kiss

Diamond is an exceptional material - hard, stiff, transparent, which makes it ideal for the fabrication of optical and mechanical systems that take advantage of these properties. Diamond is not only "better", but it offers the possibility of integrating bright colour centres. These optically active defects can be exploited for a variety of applications, including the study of fundamental science, magnetometry, biosensing and new types of lasers. Despite the attractive properties of diamond for optics, no standard platform exists to create photonic circuits and devices. This thesis shows the realisation of a diamond-on-insulator photonics platform, that aims to combine the versatility of the silicon-on-insulator photonics with the capability of performing diamond science in single crystal guided-wave devices. The diamond-on-insulator substrate is achieved via ion implantation-based cut of a single crystal membrane and bonding of the membrane to an insulator layer. This approach provides a monolithic fabrication process that scales to commercial exploitation, bringing convenient access to the study of diamond light-matter interactions without requiring custom substrate fabrication. Furthermore, the possibility of releasing the diamond devices adds access to freestanding structures, opening the way to diamond micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems and optomechanics. Diamond also makes an excellent microoptics substrate, due to its high laser damage threshold, transparency and high refractive index, which is an attractive combination for high-power, compact optical systems operating in the UV, visible and near-infrared. Different diamond etching techniques are developed and investigated in this thesis, that enable the realisation of unique features. These techniques are employed to create diamond diffractive microoptical components, which are then characterised, showing high-quality surfaces that closely match the designed features, indicating reliable fabrication and resulting in excellent optical performance. These devices have applications in high power beamsplitters, beam shapers and compact spectrometers.

EPFL2019

Advanced Diamond Microfabrication for Microoptics and Photonics

Marcell Kristof Kiss

EPFL2019

EPFL2021