Recent advances in integrated photonic-electronic technologies for high-speed processing and communication circuits for light-based transducers

The paper reviews recent advances in integrated technologies to embed photonic and electronic circuits and systems within the same chip and/or package. Thanks to multi-project wafer services like Europractice, new technologies (e.g. the SG25-PIC by IHP or the iSiPP50G by IMEC), are available at affordable cost to integrate on silicon chip also photonic devices like waveguides, photodiodes, photonic modulators and fiber-couplers. As an evolution, SG25H-EPIC technology is a high performance technology by IHP, which combines in the same chip integrated Silicon Photonic devices of the SG25-PIC technology with Bipolar and CMOS electronic circuits of the SiGe BiCMOS SG25H4 technology. The paper reviews these capabilities and show how it is possible to integrate in the same chip photonics and electronics to reach high speed in terms of signal acquisition, processing and transmission of light-based transducers.