Silicon photonics in Pirelli

Abstract

Silicon is the dominant material in the microelectronic industry and silicon photonics is rapidly gaining importance as a technological platform for a wide range of applications in telecom, and optical interconnect. It allows the implementation of many photonic functions through the use of wafer-scale technologies normally used for advanced CMOS-processing. In this paper some of the most important issues toward a practical implementation of Silicon photonics into an industrial device will be addressed: low loss waveguides, polarization handling, tunability, hitless switching. A tunable Add-Drop multiplexer has been chosen as a case Study of a fully integrated device

Silicon waveguide-based mode-evolution polarization rotator

“…The reason behind is that it needs longer transition length to obtain efficient conversion for longer wavelength. The simulation results show the same trend as in references [8] and [11]. In the FDTD simulations, we also observed that the waveguide dimensions affected the PER of the TM to TE conversion and TE to TM conversion.…”

“…In 2006, a polarization-transparent add-drop filter was demonstrated with the mode-evolution-based polarization splitter-rotator (PSR) in silicon nitride waveguide [10]. In 2008, Romagnoli et al in Pirelli demonstrated an integrated PSR in silicon channel waveguide with cross-section of 450nm×220nm [11]. The polarization rotation efficiency improved monotonically with the increase of PSR length.…”