State of the Art in Silicon Photonics

Dear Colleagues,

Silicon photonics (SiPh) has been an early adopter of the fabless foundry model, process design kits, and multi-project wafer runs (MPW), directly resulting in the field’s growing ubiquity. The unprecedented access to technology that this gives, combined with the cost effectiveness of MPWs, has allowed for an explosion of SiPh into new application spaces. While SiPh in datacom has been flourishing with the recent announcement of deployable 1.6 Tb optical engines, new exciting application areas have arisen as well, such as quantum computing, photonic computing, reprogrammable photonics, visible photonics for atom/iron trapping, and spectral-based sensing. These SiPh-driven applications promise new paradigms in computing, health care diagnostics, sensing, and security.

Growth in these diverse use areas is driven by both technology and device enhancements. Within this Special Issue of Applied Sciences, we will publish novel and high-impact research papers representing the ‘State of the Art in Silicon Photonics’, with a particular interest in the areas of:

• Reduction in propagation losses: active and passive builds, Si, SiN, etc.
• Reduction in coupling losses: both edge and grating, metamaterial enhancement, etc.
• Laser integration: on/off chip, die and wafer level heterogeneous integration, homogenous growth of IIIVs on wafer, etc.
• Packaging: interposers both optical and electronic, wafer level packaging, flip-chip, photonic wire bonds, etc.
• Passives: bends, layer changes, AWGs, echelle grating, polarization rotators, MMI, power splitters, Bragg gratings, photonic crystals, nonlinear devices, etc.
• Photodetector: PIN, APD, Si, SiGe, Ge, IIIV, etc.
• Modulators: MZI, ring, plasma dispersion/absorption based, Si, heterogeneous integration of electro-optic materials: IIIV, polymers, lithium niobate, barium titanate, graphene, thermal management, etc.
• Micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS): devices, high-Q systems, release methods, etc.
• Process design kit development: statistical model generation, automated testing: photonic and optoelectronic (DC/RF), etc.
• Integrated control schemes: thermal dithering, automatic bias control, calibration processes, etc.
• Applications: data/tele-communications, interconnects, optical computing, quantum technology, sensing, visible photonics, etc.

Dr. Lewis Carpenter
Dr. Anthony Rizzo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• silicon photonics
• CMOS
• laser integration
• data/tele-communications
• interconnects
• optical computing
• quantum technology
• sensing
• gratings/edge-couplers
• modulators
• photodiodes