Integrated silicon waveguide for intra-chip communication: A practical experience

Abstract

This paper presents the design and fabrication of a waveguide in silicon using traditional microfabrication and manufacturing processes. Integrated waveguide has become important owing to the need for faster computing and the problems associated with copper as technology scales into the nanometer regime. Furthermore, photonic on-chip interconnect offers better latency, higher bandwidth capacity, power efficiency, faster speed and reduced interference when compared with electrical interconnect. To test the silicon waveguide, a Gb/s communication system was assembled and laser light was coupled and transmitted through the chip.