Configurable circuit technology poised to expand silicon photonic applications

Science Daily  May 28, 2020 Researchers in the UK have designed and fabricated building blocks for the configurable circuits in the form of erasable directional couplers (DCs) using ion implanted waveguides. Once the configurable/one-time programmable (OTP) silicon photonic circuit is programmed, its signal routing is retained without the need for additional power consumption. This technology can potentially enable a multi-purpose design of photonic chips for a range of different applications and performance requirements, as it can be programmed for each specific application after chip fabrication. Proof-of-principle demonstrators in the form of generic 1×4 and 2×2 programmable switching circuits were fabricated […]