Integrated Silicon Nanophotonic Data Processing Devices: A Brief Review

Significant scientific efforts are constantly invested in the attempts to develop photonic circuitry integrated in microelectronic chip. Such circuitry should be capable of realizing fundamental processing building blocks such as modulators (or transistors) and logic gates in order to improve the performance of an optics communication short and/or long range links. The improvement is to be obtained in the sense of reduced power dissipation, lower noise level and increased information bandwidth. This paper reviews some of the technologies involved in those efforts. Specifically we focus on silicon based integrated nanophotonic modulation devices (based upon plasma dispersion as well as fundamental non linear processes in silicon) as well as passive devices for directing and spectrally filtering light via silicon nanophotonic crystal structures. The patents mentioned in this review relate to the realization of nanophotonic logic gates for data processing, they are related to photonic nano communication link apparatus, apparatus and method for switching, modulation and dynamic control of light transmission using photonic crystals and to modulator-based photonic chip-tochip interconnections for dense three-dimensional multichip module integration.