Silicon evanescent devices for optical networks and buffers

The main driver today of the silicon photonics is the quest for silicon-based optoelectronic integrated circuits which can be manufactured in state-of-art high-volume silicon fabrication facilities. Additionally, it can open up vast and significant applications of photonics in optical interconnects in board-to-board, chip-to-chip, and intra-chip communications. Raman lasers and amplifiers, high speed modulators, and photodetectors have been successfully demonstrated and have widened the applications of silicon as an optoelectronic material. However, the indirect bandgap of silicon has been a major hurdle in achieving optical gain elements. Even though many different ways have been studied such as bandgap engineering, rare earth element doping and nano-patterned silicon, an electrically pumped silicon gain element has been an unsolved challenge.; One way to address the issue of having an electrically pumped optical gain element can be hybrid integration with III-V materials including die attachment of prefabricated III-V devices on silicon waveguide circuits, hetero-epitaxial growth of III-V gain layers on silicon substrates, and wafer bonding III-V gain layers on silicon.; This thesis reports on active photonic devices fabricated with a silicon passive silicon waveguide circuit using a low temperature oxygen plasma wafer bonding process, which is referred to as the silicon evanescent device platform. This integration platform is designed with the explicit objective of providing a scalable fabrication process for high volume manufacturing, and efficient light coupling between the active devices and the passive devices.; This thesis will initially detail first demonstrations of the silicon evanescent lasers, amplifiers, and photodetectors built on the silicon evanescent device platform. Next, two different integrated photonic devices, preamplified photoreceivers and optical buffers will be presented to show the feasibility of photonic integration on the silicon evanescent device platform.