Scanning electron microscopic (SEM) image of hollow on-chip silicon waveguide produced by the Applied Optics Group at University of California at Santa Cruz.
The world's first demonstration of electromagnetic optical switching on a fully self-contained silicon chip heralds a day when fiber optics will carry information between chips. Look for novel optical solutions for everything from disk-server-farms to home networking over the next five years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog
UCSC fabricates arrays of waveguides on a single four inch silicon wafer, here showing 32 atomic spectroscopy chips using them.
Here is what EETimes says about silicon photonics: A new technique harnesses vapor-filled optical waveguides on silicon chips to process data streams encoded on light, allowing optical signals to be slowed down and switched on-chip. This technique sidesteps the current requirement to convert optical signals to electrical signals in applications that detect, buffer, multiplex and store photonic information...In what is claimed to be the world's first demonstration of electromagnetic optical switching on a fully self-contained silicon chip, the technique employs quantum interference effects in an on-chip hollow-core optical waveguide filled with rubidium vapor. A control laser is used to switch the optical signal on and off as well as to slow the data stream's speed by up to 1,200 times...
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