Optoelectronic Component Design for Photonic Integrated Circuits

Background

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are a key enabling technology for a broad range of current and next-generation products. Combining semiconductor materials and manufacturing processes common to microelectronics with the encoding, transmission and detection of light, PICs are transforming communication in datacenters by bringing bandwidth closer to compute cores, and are accelerating emerging applications like LiDAR for autonomy and quantum computing for the future of information processing. The connection between the electronic and photonic realms is made by devices capable of encoding electrical signals on optical channels and recovering that information by converting light back into electrical charge. In PICs, electro-optic modulators and photo detectors are the fundamental optoelectronic components that make these transitions possible.

Ever-increasing demands for bandwidth, power efficiency, and sensitivity require leading-edge simulation technology that connects the device model with the manufacturing process and its complete multiphysics behavior. Combining Silvaco Victory Process and Ansys Lumerical software for TCAD-enabled photonic device simulation equips designers and engineers with the necessary tools for complete and accurate prediction, analysis and optimization of optoelectronic device behavior.