“…The concept of employing silicon as a material for light guiding, filtering, and manipulation was initially investigated in the 1980s [1][2][3], but it was not until the last two decades when the demand for high-speed and low-power photonics emerged, that the field began to flourish as we know it today, becoming likely the dominant technology of PICs [4]. The ability to mass-produce low-cost devices integrating photonic and electronic components using current semiconductor fabrication processes (such as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)) is the significant advantage of silicon photonics over competing strategies (such as III-V semiconductor heterostructures) [5][6][7][8][9].…”