Nonlinear silicon photonics has shown an ability to generate, manipulate, and detect optical signals on an ultracompact chip at a potential low cost. There are still barriers hindering its development due to essential material limitations. In this review, hybrid structures with some specific materials developed for nonlinear silicon photonics are discussed. The combination of silicon and the nonlinear materials takes advantage of both materials, which shows great potential to improve the performance and expand the applications for nonlinear silicon photonics.

Mid-infrared (MIR) integrated photonics has attracted broad interest due to its promising applications in biochemical sensing, environmental monitoring, disease diagnosis, and optical communication. Among MIR integration platforms, germanium-based platforms hold many excellent properties, such as wide transparency windows, high refractive indices, and high nonlinear coefficients; however, the development of MIR germanium photonic devices is still in its infancy. Specifically, MIR high-Q germanium resonators with comparable performance to their silicon counterparts remain unprecedented. Here we experimentally demonstrate an MIR germanium nanocavity with a Q factor of ～18,000, the highest-to-date of reported nanocavities across MIR germanium-based integration platforms. This is achieved through a combination of a feasible theoretical design, Smart-Cut methods for wafer development, and optimized device fabrication processes. Our nanocavity, with its high Q factor and ultrasmall mode volume, opens new avenues for on-chip applications in the MIR spectral range.

We report on the first electrically pumped continuous-wave (CW) InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) laser grown on Si with a GaInP upper cladding layer. A QD laser structure with a Ga0.51In0.49P upper cladding layer and an Al0.53Ga0.47As lower cladding layer was directly grown on Si by metal–organic chemical vapor deposition. It demonstrates the postgrowth annealing effect on the QDs was relieved enough with the GaInP upper cladding layer grown at a low temperature of 550°C. Broad-stripe edge-emitting lasers with 2-mm cavity length and 15-μm stripe width were fabricated and characterized. Under CW operation, room-temperature lasing at ～1.3 μm has been achieved with a threshold density of 737 A/cm2 and a single-facet output power of 21.8 mW.

Microring lasers feature ultralow thresholds and inherent wavelength-division multiplexing functionalities, offering an attractive approach to miniaturizing photonics in a compact area. Here, we present static and dynamic properties of microring quantum dot lasers grown directly on exact (001) GaP/Si. Effectively, a single-mode operation was observed at 1.3 μm with modes at spectrally distant locations. High temperature stability with T0～103 K has been achieved with a low threshold of 3 mA for microrings with an outer ring radius of 15 μm and a ring waveguide width of 4 μm. Small signal modulation responses were measured for the first time for the microrings directly grown on silicon, and a 3 dB bandwidth of 6.5 GHz was achieved for a larger ring with an outer ring radius of 50 μm and a ring waveguide width of 4 μm. The directly modulated microring laser, monolithically integrated on a silicon substrate, can incur minimal real estate cost while offering full photonic functionality.

We introduce a nanoscale photonic platform based on gallium phosphide. Owing to the favorable material properties, peak power intensity levels of 50 GW/cm2 are safely reached in a suspended membrane. Consequently, the field enhancement is exploited to a far greater extent to achieve efficient and strong light–matter interaction. As an example, parametric interactions are shown to reach a deeply nonlinear regime, revealing cascaded four-wave mixing leading to comb generation and high-order soliton dynamics.

In this paper, we report the experimental characterization of highly nonlinear GeSbS chalcogenide glass waveguides. We used a single-beam characterization protocol that accounts for the magnitude and sign of the real and imaginary parts of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility of integrated Ge23Sb7S70 (GeSbS) chalcogenide glass waveguides in the near-infrared wavelength range at λ=1580 nm. We measured a waveguide nonlinear parameter of 7.0±0.7 W 1·m 1, which corresponds to a nonlinear refractive index of n2=(0.93±0.08)×10 18 m2/W, comparable to that of silicon, but with an 80 times lower two-photon absorption coefficient βTPA=(0.010±0.003) cm/GW, accompanied with linear propagation losses as low as 0.5 dB/cm. The outstanding linear and nonlinear properties of GeSbS, with a measured nonlinear figure of merit FOMTPA=6.0±1.4 at λ=1580 nm, ultimately make it one of the most promising integrated platforms for the realization of nonlinear functionalities.

We present in this work a new mathematical model to analyze and evaluate optical phenomena occurring in the nonuniform optical waveguide used in integrated optics as an optical coupler. By introducing some modifications to the intrinsic integral, we perfectly assess the radiation field present in the adjacent medium of the waveguide and, thus, follow the evolution of the optical coupling from the taper thin film to the substrate and cladding until there is a total energy transfer. The new model that is introduced can be used to evaluate electromagnetic field distribution in three mediums that constitute any nonuniform optical couplers presenting great or low wedge angles.

A system of an add-drop microring resonator integrated with a sampled grating distributed feedback (SG-DFB) is investigated via modeling and simulation with the time-domain traveling wave (TDTW) method. The proposed microring resonator comprises a SiO2 waveguide integrated with an InGaAsP/InP SG-DFB, and the SiO2 waveguide consists of a silicon core having a refractive index of 3.48 and Kerr coefficient of 4.5×10 18 m2/W. The SG-DFB consists of a series of grating bursts that are constructed using a periodic apodization function with a burst spacing in the grating of 45 μm, a burst length of 5 μm, and 10 bursts across the total length of the SG-DBR. Transmission results of the through and drop port of the microring resonator show the significant capacity enhancement of the generated center wavelengths. The Q-factor of the microring resonator system, defined as the center wavelength (λ0) divided by 3 dB FWHM, without and with integration with the SG-DFB is calculated as 1.93×105 and 2.87×105, respectively. Analysis of the dispersion of the system reveals that increasing the wavelength results in a decrease of the dispersion. The higher capacity and efficiency are the advantages of integrating the microring resonator and the InGaAsP/InP SG-DFB.