Silicon photonics: a new technology platform to enable low cost and high performance photonics

Abstract: 
Photonic devices which can be fabricated using the same advantages of microelectronics: smaller, cheaper and faster. This is what silicon photonics allows. Thousands of photonic devices integrated in a few square cm which are able to transmit signal over long distances at high speed. Optical networks which handle tens of channels and route them all across an electronic chip. An entire bio-lab with the size of a nail. Solar cells with conversion efficiency beyond the thermodynamic limit of silicon cells. These are all examples where the silicon photonics paradigm has shown all its potential. In this talk the basic and state of the art of silicon photonics will be discussed together with the relevance of silicon nanophotonics to widen its application.

References: Handbook of Silicon Photonics, Laurent Vivien and Lorenzo Pavesi editors, CRC Press (Taylor and Francis group, April 2013)
Silicon Nanocrystals; Fundamentals, Synthesis and Applications edited by L. Pavesi and R. Turan (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2010)