SOI Technology Lights Up the Next Wave of Photonics Solutions

Silicon has been the mainstay of micro-nanoelectronics since the late 1950s, being widely adopted for electronic devices and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. In the early years of the semiconductor industry, germanium was the favored material for electronic applications due to its higher carrier mobility; however, innovations at Bell Labs in surface passivation by thermal oxidation processing enabled a breakthrough in silicon semiconductor technology in the second half of the 1950s. Thermally grown silicon dioxide layers significantly reduce the concentration of electronic states at the silicon surface to electrically stabilize such interfaces. This capability has helped fuel broad adoption of silicon as the...