• Technical Conference:  30 March – 03 April 2025
  • Exhibition: 01 – 03 April 2025
  • Moscone Center, San Francisco, California, USA

Short Courses

SC267 - Silicon Microphotonics: Technology Elements and the Roadmap to Implementation

Sunday, 30 March
13:00 - 17:00 (Pacific Time (US & Canada), UTC - 08:00)

Short Course Level: Beginner

Instructor:

Lionel Kimerling, MIT, USA

This short course will be held in person only. Please check your email for information on the location where this short course will be held. If you need assistance please visit the Info Desk by registration.
Short Course Description:

The optical components industry stands at the threshold of a major expansion that will restructure its business processes and sustain its profitability for the next three decades. This growth will establish a cost-effective platform for the partitioning of electronic and photonic functionality to extend the processing power of integrated circuits and the performance of optical communications networks. The traditional dimensional shrink approach to the scaling of microprocessor technology is encountering barriers in materials and power dissipation that dictate more distributed architectures. The performance requirements for this short link interconnection have crossed the 10Mb/s.km threshold that dictates optical carrier utilization. This business direction has ignited a major change in leadership of the industry from information transmission (telecom) to information processing (data center and computing); and it will open significant new markets with high-volume applications. Silicon microphotonics is a platform for the large-scale integration of CMOS electronics with photonic components. This course will evaluate the most promising silicon photonics components and progress along the path to monolithic electronic-photonic integration. The subjects will be presented in two parts: 1) Context: a review of the recently Integrated Photonics System Roadmap released by AIM Photonics Institute, the MIT Microphotonics Center, and INEMI; and 2) Technology: case studies in design, fabrication and performance for silicon-based PICs, devices (waveguide, filter, photodetector, modulator, and lasers) and system applications. The objective of the course is to present an overview of the silicon microphotonic platform drivers and barriers in design, fabrication, packaging, and test.

Short Course Benefits:

This course should enable you to:

  • Identify trends in the optical components industry.

  • Explain the power of a standard platform.

  • Discuss the benefits of electronic-photonic integration.

  • Evaluate the latest silicon photonic devices and foundry production of chips for datacom, automotive and sensing applications.

  • Summarize the findings of the Integrated Photonics System Roadmap .

Short Course Audience:

This course is for executives and technologists in the photonic and electronic hardware industries to include planners, engineers, and scientists participating in the optical components technology supply chain.

Instructor Biography:

Lionel C. Kimerling is the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. He is the AIM Photonics Executive for Education, Workforce Development and Roadmap. He is the founding Director of the MIT Microphotonics Center where he conducts an active research program in the design and processing of semiconductor materials and devices. He was Head of the Materials Physics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories, when he joined the faculty of MIT as Professor in 1990. He has authored more than 350 technical articles and more than 50 patents. Kimerling is the recipient of the 1995 Electronics Division Award of the Electrochemical Society and the 1999 John Bardeen Award of TMS. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the AAAS, TMS, MRS and the School of Engineering, UTokyo. His research teams have enabled long-lived telecommunications lasers, developed semiconductor diagnostic methods such as DLTS, SEM-EBIC and RF-PCD, and pioneered silicon microphotonics.