当前以电子作为信息载体的微电子技术遭遇到发展瓶颈。光传输具有带宽大、速率高的特点, 将光子载体与电子载体相结合是未来信息传输发展的必然趋势。波导与光纤的高效耦合是实现光电子集成的关键。文章介绍了国内外几种典型耦合器的最新进展, 包括楔形耦合器、GRIN(渐变折射率)透镜耦合器和垂直光栅耦合器, 并对它们的性能指标、优缺点进行了比较分析, 对进一步提高耦合效率的可行性进行了展望。结果表明, 垂直光栅耦合器具有耦合效率高、带宽大、工艺成熟、工艺容差大和耦合步骤简单的优势, 在光通信与集成光电子学领域有着广阔的应用前景。

The microelectronic technology, which uses electrons as its information carrier, is currently running into the bottleneck of development. As optical communication is characteristic of broad bandwidth and high transmission rate, it is an inevitable trend for the development of future information transmission to integrate photonic carriers with electronic carriers. The highly-efficient coupling between waveguides and fibers is the key to realizing photoelectronic integration. This paper reviews the latest advances in the development of several typical couplers at home and abroad, including the tapered coupler, Gradient Refractive Index (GRIN) lens coupler and vertical grating coupler. In addition, it compares and analyzes their performance indexes, advantages and disadvantages and predicts the feasibility of further improving their coupling efficiencies. The results show that with the advantages of high coupling efficiency, wide bandwidth, mature technology, large process tolerance and simple coupling steps, vertical granting couplers have a broad prospect of applications in the fields of optical communication and integrated optoelectronics.