The evolution of silicon photonics as an enabling technology for optical interconnection

Silicon photonics defines a significant advancement in the development of highly integrated devices on a single semiconductor substrate. As a revolutionizing technology it benefits from the vast infrastructure accumulated over the previous six decades to service the burgeoning microelectronics industry and has found application in a range of areas such as telecommunications, sensing and optical interconnects. It is this latter application which is addressed primarily in this review. The potential for silicon photonics as a solution to high data rate transmission through the description of the devices and processes which have emerged in the last decade is discussed. An attempt is thus made to demonstrate that the integration of photonic and electronic functionality on a silicon substrate has the potential to propel communication beyond the Terabit per second threshold in a widely deployable paradigm.