Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in a greater diversity of materials within a photonic integrated circuit. The drivers behind this trend include the wish to integrate more functions on a chip, the demand for higher performance and the pull from a broader range of applications. The material list is long and includes silicon, silicon nitride, III-V semiconductors, electro-optic materials, quantum dots, 2D-materials, magneto-optic materials and more. The integration technologies tend to evolve towards wafer-scale heterogeneous integration approaches and are just as diverse as the material list itself, from front-end-of-line methods to back-end-of line methods and everything in between. While many impressive research results have been reported it is far less clear how this diversity will eventually translate into mature industrial supply chains, especially when considering that the total addressable market for PIC-based products is still relatively modest. This challenge along some possible ways forward will be discussed.