Subwavelength grating metamaterial waveguides for silicon photonics (Conference Presentation)

Subwavelength pho¬tonics has seen tremendous progress, particularly in nanostructured engineered materials: metamateri¬als, metallic and dielectric subwavelength structures and subwavelength engineered waveguides. The novel optical properties found in these structures, along with the capability, through advanced fabrication techniques, to control their optical responses with unprecedented accuracy, has opened new prospects for controlling and manipulating light in planar waveguide circuits, at subwavelength scale. Since the first demonstrations of an optical waveguide with a periodic subwavelength grating metamaterial core at National Research Council of Canada, metamaterial SWG waveguides have attracted a strong research interest in academia and industry because of their unique potential to control light propagation in planar waveguides. The subwavelength metamaterial waveguides have been adopted by industry for fiber-chip coupling and subwavelength engineered structures in general are likely to become key building blocks for the next generation of integrated photonic circuits. In this invited talk we will present an overview of recent advances in implementations of these structures in silicon photonics, including high-efficiency fiber-chip couplers, ultra-broadband surface grating couplers and multimode interference (MMI) devices, and grating filters for near- and mid-infrared operation.