CHIC

Our research interest areas in silicon photonics that offers complementary advantages to silicon electronics. Together they produce significantly superior systems. We have an active program in this research area with focus on both analog and digital silicon nano-photonics and electronics co-integration. Some of the imposed limits by electronic process technologies (such as silicon-based technologies) in RF, mm-wave, and sub-mm-wave designs can be overcome using photonic devices and techniques. For instance, low loss optical delays and high quality factor resonators available in the photonic integrated circuits can be used to perform optically assisted electrical signal processing. Also, the availability of large band-width around the high carrier frequency of optical fields enables the use of optical mediums as high data-rate chip-to-chip or board-to-board interconnects. Examples of optically assisted electronics are integrated low phase noise opto-electronic oscillators and optically driven mm-wave radiators. Moreover, utilizing the advanced electronic circuit and system techniques together with near zero cost of integrated transistors in high node technologies can significantly improve the performance of photonic systems. Examples are RF assisted phase noise reduction of semiconductor lasers and electronically controlled optical phased arrays.