Silicon photonics integration with electronic circuit

Silicon photonics have generated an increasing interest in the recent year, mainly for optical telecommunications or for optical interconnects in microelectronic circuits. The rationale of silicon photonics is the reduction of the cost of photonic systems through the integration of photonic components and an IC on a common chip, or in the longer term, the enhancement of IC performance with the introduction of optics inside a high performance chip. High performance generic building blocks that can be used for a broad range of applications will be presented such as WDM sources by III-V/Si heterogeneous integration, fast Si modulators and Ge or InGaAs detectors, Si passive circuits and the different scenari for integrating photonic with an electronic chip will be reviewed.