Nov. 13, 2025 –
By ST
In today’s data-driven world, the demand for higher data transfer, speed, performance and energy efficiency is growing at an unprecedented pace.â¯Silicon photonics combines the speed of light with the scalability of silicon manufacturing to meet these demands. What exactly is silicon photonics, how does it work – and crucially, why is it becoming so important? This article explores the fundamentals, applications and impact of silicon photonics.
At its core, silicon photonics involves integrating optical components onto silicon chips to generate, manipulate, and detect light for data communication. Unlike traditional electronics that rely on electrons to carry information, silicon photonics uses photons (light particles) that travel faster and carry more data with less energy loss. This fundamental difference enables data to be transmitted at much higher speeds and over longer distances with greater efficiency.
What makes silicon photonics particularly powerful is its compatibility with existing semiconductor manufacturing techniques. Optical and electronic components can coexist on the same silicon chip by leveraging mature CMOS fabrication processes. This integration allows for mass manufacturing of optical components that were once bulky and expensive and dramatically lowers production costs.
Silicon photonics converts electrical signals into optical signals and back again, allowing data to be transmitted as pulses of light. A laser generates a near-infrared light which is then modulated by electrical data signals. These modulators encode information into the light stream by altering properties such as intensity or phase.
The modulated light travels through microscopic waveguides etched into the silicon substrate, which guide the light with minimal loss. At the receiving end, photodetectors convert the optical signals back into electrical signals which are translated back to the original data for processing.