Special Topic on Silicon Photonic Device Simulation

Silicon photonics technology enables silicon-based integration, leveraging CMOS process lines to produce high-speed, highly integrated, low-cost, and low-power silicon chips. With the rapid development of emerging fields such as optical communication, optical interconnection, optical sensing, optical measurement, and optical computing, silicon photonics technology has gained broader application potential. It is regarded as one of the mainstream next-generation photonic integration technologies.

Silicon photonic devices can be categorized into two types:

1. Passive Devices: Includes waveguides (WG), micro-ring resonators (MRR), multimode interference couplers (MMI), spot size converters (SSC), edge couplers (EC), Y-branch splitters/combiners, grating couplers (GC), arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG), Bragg gratings (BG), polarization splitters (PB), polarization rotators (PR), diffraction gratings (DG), and polarization splitter rotators (PSR).
2. Active Devices: Includes modulators, detectors, and lasers. Modulators include micro-ring modulators (MRM), Mach-Zehnder interferometer modulators (MZI), and electro-absorption modulators (EAM). Detectors include waveguide photodetectors (WPD), traveling-wave photodetectors (TWPD), vertical photodetectors (VPD), and avalanche photodiodes (APD). Silicon-based lasers include hybrid silicon lasers, silicon nanocrystal rare-earth-doped lasers, and silicon-germanium lasers.

Currently, the primary application of silicon photonic devices lies in optical communication and interconnection. With the advent of 5G, IoT, and data centers, optical communication channel capacity has increased nearly five orders of magnitude over the past 30 years. Presently, 400 Gbit/s optical communication chips are being commercially deployed, and future chips will target speeds of 800 Gbit/s and Tbit/s. Additionally, as AI, biomedical applications, smart vehicles, and quantum communication advance, silicon photonic devices will find significant applications in optical computing, biosensing, LiDAR, and quantum chips.

This topic introduces the use of Macondo for simulating various silicon photonic devices, including constructing and importing device structures, setting refractive index material model parameters, conducting simulations, and analyzing results. It aims to enable users to quickly master the software, understand the electromagnetic characteristics of different silicon photonic devices through simulations, and discover ways to enhance their performance, thereby supporting the design of silicon photonic devices.

This topic primarily employs Macondo software's FDTD3D, EME3D, and FDE solvers for simulations, with active device simulations conducted in conjunction with Nuwa TCAD software. Macondo is a wave optics and electromagnetic simulation software based on finite-difference time-domain (FDTD), finite-difference eigenmode (FDE), and eigenmode expansion (EME) propagation algorithms. It is used to analyze the electromagnetic characteristics of passive and active waveguide devices. It supports the research and design of silicon photonic devices, photonic integrated circuits, optoelectronic devices, and micro-nano optical components.

The software outputs effective refractive index data, waveguide mode loss, TE/TM polarization ratio, S-parameter curves and matrices, transmission/reflection curves, frequency-domain electromagnetic field distributions, time-domain electromagnetic field distributions, refractive index distributions, and photo-generated carrier rate distributions. These features facilitate the analysis and optimization of device characteristics, ultimately improving device performance.

This topic demonstrates the simulation of optical properties for silicon photonic passive and active devices using Macondo software. It showcases device structural parameters and simulation results, aiming to help users fully understand Macondo software and learn to use it for the simulation and design of silicon photonic devices.