Emerging Trends in On-Chip Photonic Integration Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

The invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 (Jack Kilby, Nobel Prize in Physics 2000) allowed the integration of active and passive electronic components on the same semiconductor chip, which, with the subsequent IC transistor count exponential growth predicted by Moore’s Law, led to the rise of the modern microelectronic industry in the second half of the twentieth century. Similarly, photonic integration of multiple active and passive optical elements in the Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) approach can also significantly reduce the photonic system size and power consumption, improving performance compared to discrete photonic chip solutions. In both component count per chip and aggregate transmission data capacity, state-of-the-art PIC chip laboratory results have also followed an exponential growth curve over the past three decades, similar to Moore’s Law in the electronic industry.

On the other hand, mainstream commercial photonic chip technology today is still mainly dominated by discrete optical components, primarily driven by manufacturing yield, cost and reliability concerns. Several parallel photonic integration technology paths are also being investigated by both the academic and industrial communities, including III-V photonic monolithic integration, silicon photonics heterogeneous integration, and more recently Lithium Niobate on Insulator (LNOI) integration. Market forces will ultimately determine the winner.

This Special Issue aims at presenting original state-of-the-art research articles covering a broad range of topics involving photonic chip integration technologies and their industrial applications. Papers are solicited involving fundamental material, integration process and packaging research, novel photonic device designs, diverse areas of photonic integration applications, and finally their manufacturability and yield issues in the commercial world. Researchers are invited to submit their original contributions to this Special Issue. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• InP and novel III-V material PIC;
• Silicon photonics integration technology;
• LNOI integration technology;
• Photonic chip and packaging technology for high-speed optical data I/O;
• Terahertz integrated photonic chips;
• Quantum dot laser on silicon;
• High-performance integrated photonic chips for optical metrology and sensing;
• Biophotonics and biomedical engineering;
• Nanotechnology and nanochips;
• Commercial application and manufacturing issues of integrated photonic chips.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Chen Ji
Prof. Dr. Chaoyuan Jin
Dr. Fei Guo
Dr. Ronald G. Broeke
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. Photonics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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.

• InP PIC
• silicon photonic
• LNOI integration
• monolithic integration
• hybrid integration
• heterogeneous integration
• nanophotonics
• biophotonics
• THz photonics
• optical metrology