Silicon optical technology -- to create optical modules with higher speed and lower cost

Silicon optical technology can be combined with integrated circuit technology to achieve the integrated integration of optical chips and electrical chips, so as to realize the optical interconnection between chips and even within chips. Silicon optical technology has the outstanding advantages of high connection speed, low power consumption, high speed, compact structure, etc. It can be said that it is the key technology to solve the bottleneck of power consumption, speed, volume and other aspects faced by information networks.

The traditional optical module adopts a separate structure, and the optical chip realizes alignment coupling with the optical fiber through a series of passive coupling devices to complete the optical path packaging. The whole packaging process requires a lot of material and labor costs. At the same time, the packaging and testing processes are complex, and the automation rate of the packaging process is low. In the test, the optical modules need to be manually tested for alignment coupling one by one. The time cost and labor cost are both high.

Silicon Light uses the very mature silicon wafer processing technology in the traditional semiconductor industry. It can rapidly process large-scale waveguide devices on the silicon substrate by using etching technology. It can prepare key devices such as modulators and receivers by using epitaxial growth and other processing technologies. Finally, it can highly integrate modulators, receivers and passive optical devices.

Compared with traditional discrete devices, the traditional process needs to package electric chips, optical chips, lenses, alignment components, optical fiber end faces and other devices in turn. The volume of silicon light is greatly reduced, and the material cost, chip cost, and packaging cost are expected to be further optimized. At the same time, silicon light technology can be batch tested by wafer testing and other methods, and the testing efficiency is significantly improved.

At present, chip level devices based on silicon optical technology have been mature and can be processed, mainly including optical waveguide, combining and splitting devices, external modulation devices, APD receivers, etc. However, the design and process routes of various mainstream manufacturers are still quite different, and there are many technical routes. From this perspective, we can also see that silicon light technology is still in the early stage of the development of a hundred schools of thought, and the scheme with the highest cost performance and technical stability has not yet come to the fore. Silicon light technology still needs a period of precipitation and development to focus on the ultimately winning mainstream technology, so as to give greater play to the scale effect of CMOS technology, Cost and yield can be continuously optimized. Silicon optical chip technology is relatively mature, but there are still many technical difficulties in packaging process from chip to optical module, and packaging yield and cost still need to be optimized.