All-silicon integrated platform for light generation, manipulation, and detection—and its application to refractive index sensors

Traditional silicon photonic platforms offer powerful capabilities for light manipulation and detection but cannot realize an integrated light source. This results in systems with increased cost and complexity due to the need for external light generation and coupling. In this work we overcome this limitation and experimentally demonstrate the generation, manipulation, and detection of waveguide-coupled light in a commercial silicon photonics foundry with monolithically integrated electronics—without any modification to the fabrication process and no additional post-processing steps. We propose the use of our platform to realize fully integrated, monolithic optical refractometric sensors and theoretically show that performance comparable to commercial, state of the art bench-top systems can be achieved. Our work lays the foundation for the realization of truly monolithic, full-functionality silicon photonic electro-optical systems with increasing levels of miniaturization and cost reduction.