SC300 Silicon Photonics

Sunday, May 4, 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Bahram Jalali; Univ. of California at Los Angeles, USA

Course Description
After dominating the electronics industry for decades, silicon is on the verge of becoming the material of choice for the photonics industry, the traditional stronghold of III-V semiconductors. Stimulated by a series of recent breakthroughs and propelled by increasing investments by governments and the private sector, silicon photonics is now the most active discipline within the field of integrated optics. The aim of this course is to provide an in depth understanding of the silicon photonics technology, its unique features and its anticipated impact. It discusses passive devices such as waveguides and wavelength filters, photodetectors, modulators, amplifiers, lasers and wavelength converters.

The course will highlight the state-of-the-art in each device category and outline challenges that must be overcome before large-scale commercialization can take place. In particular, for realization of integration with CMOS VLSI, silicon photonics must be compatible with the economics of silicon manufacturing and must operate within thermal constraints of VLSI chips. The impact of silicon photonics will reach beyond optical communication - its traditionally anticipated application. Silicon has excellent linear and nonlinear optical properties in the mid-wave infrared spectrum. These properties, along with silicon’s excellent thermal conductivity and optical damage threshold, open up the possibility for a new class of mid-infrared photonic devices.

Benefits and Learning Objectives
This course should enable you to:

• Understand unique attributes of the silicon photonics technology.
• Compare properties of silicon photonics with other integrated optics technologies.
• Identify main technical challenges that remain on the path to wide scale commercialization.
• Justify investment in silicon photonics.
• Define the most promising applications of silicon photonics.

Intended Audience
The intended audience is engineers, engineering managers, graduate students and private equity investors who are interested in research and commercializaiton of silicon photonics.

Instructor Biography
Bahram Jalali is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at UCLA. He is a fellow of IEEE, a fellow of the Optical Society of America, and chair of the Los Angeles Chapter of the IEEE Lasers and Electro Optics Society (LEOS). His research interests include silicon photonics and techniques for ultra fast data generation and capture. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and holds six U.S. patents. He is the recipient of the 2007 R.W. Wood Prize from the Optical Society of America. In 2005, he was chosen by Scientific American as one of the “50 Leaders Shaping the Future of Technology.” While on leave from UCLA from 1999-2001, Jalali founded Cognet Microsystems, a Los Angeles-based fiber optic component company. He served as the company’s CEO, president and chairman, from its inception through acquisition by Intel Corp. in 2001. From 2001-2004, he was a consultant for Intel. Jalali serves on the Board of Trustees of the California Science Center. He has received the BridgGate 20 Award for his contributions to the Southern California economy.