| Abstract |
The overall aim of MEPHISTO is to develop a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based hybrid integration platform ('optical motherboard', OMB) for implementing optical subsystems encompassing optical, optoelectronic and electronic functions. Such a comprehensive hybridised integration will be a key technology to meet the demands of increasing compactness and complexity, mass production, cost reduction, and reliability of future optical components to be used in photonic networks, but also for other emerging areas like sensor and microsystems technologies, and in particular optical interconnects in high-speed VLSI electronics. It is unlikely that in the foreseeable future such complex integrated subsystems will rely on a fully monolithic integration approach due to inherent drawbacks with respect to overall performance and yield. SOI material will be employed as integration platform because it offers a number of distinct advantages over competing materials (silica-on-silicon, polymers or silicon-oxynitride), both technically and economically. Compared to previous developments in this field the target of the MEPHISTO project takes the concepts of optical motherboards much further, involving the hybridisation of the active III-V components with sophisticated silicon optical circuits which will comprise arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG) and variable optical attenuators (VOA), and the integration of Si VLSI electronics. More specifically, the goals of MEPHISTO are to study and develop crucial, innovative enabling technologies and building blocks for realizing advanced SOI based OMB subsystems. These will be used in particular to implement 'proof-of-concept' integrated dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transmitter components for C-band wavelength (1535-1565 nm) operation incorporating complex optical, optoelectronic, and electronic functions. The practicability, the issues and challenges involved in the SOI based optical motherboard technology will be assessed.
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