Vision and Mission

Miniature, accurate, and cost-effective functional photonic/optoelectronic devices/circuits are at high demands these days for novel applications in the area of computation, communication, biomedical, space and defense environments. It is also established that the SOI based CMOS technologies can be exploited to integrate both electronic and photonic devices monolithically and/or heterogeneous vertical stacking by the use of optical interposer/interconnects. Thus, completely a new research area namely, "Silicon Photonics" had been introduced couple of decades ago.

The integrated optoelectronics research group at IIT Madras has been working to develop indigenous silicon photonics technology since 2007. By the end of 2012, various prototype devices like power splitters (2X2, 1X2 & 1X8), 100 GHz ITU channel interleaver, variable optical attenuator, p-i-n phase shifter/modulator, ring resonator etc. were demonstrated by exploiting conventional microelectronics technology. Silicon photonics is now one of the thrust areas of research in our Centre for NEMS and Nanophotonics (funded by DeitY, Govt. of India). The centre is equipped with advanced nanofabrication facilities and the goal of the research group is now set to carryout world class silicon photonics research encompassing novel device designs, CMOS compatible fabrication process optimizations and experimental demonstrations leading towards cost-effective, energy-efficient and high-speed optoelectronic interconnects for various applications.

Some of our ongoing research activities are:

Spot-size converters to integrate microns to sub-micron waveguides to enable large-scale on- chip integration.
Low impedance integration of 2D photonic crystal structures for slow light applications
Low dimension photonic wire waveguides, submicron grating structures and microring resonators, etc. for enhanced nonlinear interactions, delay lines, and wavelength selective parametric and non-parametric processes.
Waveguide phase shifters (p-i-n/p-n/MOS structures and microheaters) for active functional devices/circuits
Arrayed waveguide grating for on-chip DWDM solutions