Silicon Photonics Circuit Design: Methods, Tools and Challenges

Abstract

Silicon Photonics technology is rapidly maturing as a platform for larger‐scale photonic circuits. As a result, the associated design methodologies are also evolving from component‐oriented design to a more circuit‐oriented design flow, that makes abstraction from the very detailed geometry and enables design on a larger scale. In this paper, the state of this emerging photonic circuit design flow and its synergies with electronic design automation (EDA) are reviewed. The design flow from schematic capture, circuit simulation, layout and verification is covered. The similarities and the differences between photonic and electronic design, and the challenges and opportunities that present themselves in the new photonic design landscape, such as variability analysis, photonic‐electronic co‐simulation and compact model definition are discussed.

Ultra‐Broadband and Ultra‐Compact On‐Chip Silicon Polarization Beam Splitter by Using Hetero‐Anisotropic Metamaterials

“…Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform have been widely employed to develop various applications. [1,2] The SOI-based nano-wire waveguide can provide high index contrast between silicon (n Si 3.46) and silicon dioxide (n SiO2 1.45), which enables subwavelength light confinement and strong light-matter interaction, leading to numerous ultra-compact and highly efficient nanophotonic devices. However, the high index contrast also gives rise to waveguide birefringence.…”

Active meta-optics and nanophotonics with halide perovskites

“…As a result, halide perovskite nanoparticles 26 , nanowires 27,28 , microdisks 29 , microplates 30 , nanoscale gratings 31 , and metasurfaces 32,33 are easy to fabricate and process, and they can become a convenient and cheap part of optical circuitry in the near future 34 . Nevertheless, the existing silicon-based platform is much more developed for on-chip integrated photonics 35 , but it is expected to be outperformed by the perovskites in the future.…”

High performance fully etched isotropic microring resonators in thin-film lithium niobate on insulator platform

“…Silicon photonics (SiPh) is hailed as the frontier of such technologies [7][8][9] and has been in development for at least two decades. Thanks to its high index contrast (HIC) property [10], the core photonic functionalities such as optical routing with waveguides [11], low propagation loss (1-3 dB/cm) [12], power splitters and combiners [13][14][15], wavelength selective filters [16,17], broadband Mach-Zehnder modulators [18,19], wavelength selective modulators [20,21], low-loss vertical grating couplers [22][23][24] and edge couplers for optical input/output are now well-established and various foundries around the world offer their own standardized process development kits (PDKs) to the public [9].…”