Low Loss Nanophotonic Waveguides and Ring Resonators in Silicon-on-Insulator

High index contrast, wavelength-scale structures are the key to ultra-compact integration of photonic integrated circuits. We discuss the general properties of these nanophotonic components and the rationale for using them. We studied the fabrication of these structures in the Silicon-on-insulator material system using CMOS processing methods and find this technology to be suitable for commercial implementation of nanophotonic IC's. We review photonic wires as one of the paths towards achieving denser integration and discuss the measurement results of waveguides and ring resonators. To tackle the coupling to fiber and the polarization dependency problem, we studied and fabricated vertical fiber couplers.