Silicon Nanophotonics : Basic Principles, Present Status, and Perspectives, Second Edition

Photonics is a key technology of this century. The combination of photonics and silicon technology is of great importance because of the potentiality of coupling electronics and optical functions on a single chip. Many experimental and theoretical studies have been performed to understand and design the photonic properties of silicon nanocrystals. Generation of light in silicon is a challenging perspective in the field; however, the issue of light-emitting devices does not limit the activity in the field. Research is also focused on light modulators, optical waveguides and interconnectors, optical amplifiers, detectors, memory elements, photonic crystals, etc. A particularly important task of silicon nanostructures is to generate electrical energy from solar light. Understanding the optical properties of silicon-based materials is central in designing photonic components. It is not possible to control the optical properties of nanoparticles without fundamental information on their microscopic structure, which explains a large number of theoretical works on this subject. Many fundamental and practical problems should be solved in order to develop this technology. In addition to open fundamental questions, it is even more difficult to develop the known experimental results towards practical realization. However, the world market for silicon photonics is expected to be huge; thus, more research activity in the field of silicon nanophotonics is expected in the future. This book describes different aspects of silicon nanophotonics, from fundamental issues to practical devices. The second edition is essentially different from the book published in 2008. Eight chapters of the first edition are not included in the new book, because the recent progress on those topics has not been large enough. Instead, seven new chapters appear. The other eight chapters are essentially modified to describe recent achievements in the field. 1. Silicon nanocrystals enabling silicon photonics / Nicola Daldosso -- 2. Silicon nanocrystals for photonics and photovoltaics : ab initio results / Stefano Ossicini, Marco Govoni, Roberto Guerra, and Ivan Marri -- 3. Modeling nonlinear optical phenomena in silicon nanocrystal structures / Ivan D. Rukhlenko -- 4. Band structure of silicon nanocrystals / Katerina Kasova, Prokop Hapala, Pavel Jelinek, and Ivan Pelant -- 5. Engineering the optical response of nanostructured silicon / Joachim Diener, Minoru Fujii, and Dmitri Kovalev -- 6. Room temperature light emission from silicon nanowires fabricated by a metal-assisted wet etching process / Alessia Irrera, Giorgia Franzo, Barbara Fazio, Simona Boninelli, Paolo Musumeci, Francesco Priolo, and Fabio Iacona -- 7. All-inorganic colloidal silicon nanocrystals / Minoru Fujii -- 8. Engineering nonlinear sources with silicon-compatible optical materials / Antonio Capretti, Yu Wang, and Luca Dal Negro -- 9. Light emission from silicon-based materials : from silicon nanostructures to rare earth ions / Fabio Iacona, Maria Miritello, Simona Boninelli, Gabriele Bellocchi, Alessia Irrera, Francesco Priolo, and Giorgia Franzo -- 10. Silicon nanocrystals in silica : optical properties and laser annealing / Leonid Khriachtchev -- 11. Information capacity of silicon nanophotonics / Dimitris Dimitropoulos and Bahram Jalali -- 12. Silicon nanocrystal memories / Panagiotis Dimitrakis, Pascal Normand, and Dimitris Tsoukalas -- 13. Nanostructured silicon light emitters / Paolo Pellegrino, Olivier Jambois, Se-Young Seo, and Blas Garrido -- 14. Silicon nanostructures for photovoltaics / Fabrice Gourbilleau, Pratibha R. Nalini, Julien Cardin, Christian Dufour, Odile Robbe, Yannick Lambert, Di Zhou, Tao Xu, and Didier Stievenard -- 15. Biological applications of silicon nanostructures / Sharon M. Weiss and Shuren Hu Content: Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Preface 1 Silicon Nanocrystals Enabling Silicon Photonics 1.1 The Need of Silicon Photonics 1.1.1 Waveguides 1.1.2 Modulators 1.1.3 Sources 1.1.4 Detectors 1.2 Nanosilicon for Photonics 1.2.1 Si-nc Waveguides 1.2.2 Nonlinear Effects: Fast Optical Switches 1.2.3 Light Emission and Optical Gain in Si Nanocrystals 1.2.4 Si Nanocrystals LEDs 1.2.5 Er Coupled to Nano-Si for Optical Amplifiers 1.2.6 Carrier Absorption within Si Nanocrystals Waveguides 1.3 Conclusions 2 Silicon Nanocrystals for Photonics and Photovoltaics: Ab initio Results 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Silicon Nanocrystals Embedded in Matrices Photonics is a key technology of this century. The combination of photonics and Si technology is of great importance due to the potentiality of coupling electronics and optical functions on a single chip. This book describes different aspects of Silicon Nanophotonics, from fundamental issues to practical devices.