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PHOTONICS-SOI


Our Smart Cut™ Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology, dedicated to photonics and optical networks, offers ground-breaking new solutions achieving high data rates at an optimized cost in a broad range of datacom applications.

Our Smart Photonics SOI product line leverages our dedicated Photonics-SOI technology for datacom applications and systems, combining cutting-edge optical functions with electronic circuits in a small form-factor. Smart Photonics SOI also applies in 3D sensing, healthcare monitoring, Lidar or quantum applications.

Silicon Photonics is leveraging platforms for datacom to achieve a best-in-class ratio pJ/bit/mm2. CMOS process Leverage high volume manufacturing for high-speed transceivers and the evolution to optical I/Os for chip to chip interconnect at competitive cost.

Key markets and related applications

Silicon photonics opens a new era by offering high-data-rate and cost-effective solutions.

Basics of the Silicon-Photonics

At SWIR wavelengths, the top crystalline silicon layer of the SOI wafer becomes transparent. Designers can then pattern this thin layer to obtain sub-micrometer optical waveguides used to convey signals at optical frequencies. Moreover, the oxide upper and under claddings provides strong optical confinement, needed to implement a large set of integrated optical devices in a small form-factor.





Typical Photonics-SOI is defined by: 2µm BOX with 220nm Top Silicon layer

Soitec offers variations of single SOI in 200mm and 300mm wafer as well as double SOI:

  • Highly uniform top silicon layer: 0,1µm to 20 µm (EPI)
  • Buried oxide layer: 50nm to 3µm
  • High resistivity handle wafer
  • Low Bulk Micro Defect (BMD) handle wafer

Key Material Performances

  • Best-in-class uniformity of SOI and BOX layers
  • Flawless surface
  • Low Roughness at Silicon interfaces
  • High Crystalline-quality layer

User Benefits

  • Signal integrity with low-loss waveguide
  • Signal quality with optimal optical confinement
  • High RF immunity
  • Complex monolithic integration of photonics blocks

SOI-based photonics substrates obtained with Smart Cut™ proprietary technology take advantage of the atomically flat and uniform Silicon crystalline layer enabling light routing through sub-micrometer-scale optical waveguides.

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