Silicon Photonics: Fundamentals and Devices

1.7 Scope of the Book

In the earlier sections, an attempt has been made to identify the areas where Si photonics may be useful and advantageous. A few photonic devices are in the matured state of development, while a few others, notably emitters and modulators, are in the stage of early research or at most at the development stage in the laboratory. The book aims at providing the basic principles of operation of the devices, the structures of the devices, and an idea of the state-of-the art developments. The following is a brief description of the chapter-wise coverage of different topics.

Chapter 2 describes the fundamental electronic properties of silicon and its alloys, and of heterostructures made with Si-based materials. The band structure, density-of-states in bulk silicon, and Ge are discussed first followed by similar discussions on Si and Ge-based alloys. A general introduction of heterostructures and band line-up then follows. The special features of Si-based heterostructures, the pseudomorphiv growth, are then introduced. The band structure modifications arising out of strain and band offsets and band line-ups are then introduced. Recently, direct band gap has been achieved in tensile-strained Ge layers grown on Sn-based Si alloys. The theory and results obtained are presented.

Chapter 3 is devoted to quantum nanostructures. In the beginning, a simplified picture of quantum confinement and calculation of energy levels, density-of-states in quantum wells (QWs) using well-studied ...