It is clear that silicon photonics requires a directly integrated laser source using wafer- scale technologies, and an efficient modulator without any coupling between amplitude and phase modulation to implement low power and high speed integrated transceivers. To achieve these targets, an increasing amount of research is geared towards the integration of novel materials and the development of new integration methods on the silicon photonics platform. This presentation will give a review of the state-of-the-art in this domain, covering novel methods for III-V integration, novel materials for pure phase modulation (LN, BTO, PZT, polymers, 2D-materials) and novel materials focusing on pure amplitude modulation (Ge, SiGe, Graphene).

An all-optical switch can potentially reduce the cost and power consumption of today’s data center networks, by eliminating opto-electronic conversions. A fast wavelength tunable source is a key component to enable fast network reconfigurability. In this presentation, we will share some of our experiences of prototyping a sub-nanosecond wavelength switching source using the JePPIX platform.