Richard Soref: The new frontiers of silicon photonics

Silicon photonics luminaries series

Interview 4: Professor Richard Soref

John Bowers acknowledges him with ‘kicking off’ silicon photonics some 30 years ago, while Andrew Rickman refers to him as the ‘founding father of silicon photonics’. An interview with Richard Soref. 

It was fibre-optic communications that started Professor Richard Soref on the path to silicon photonics.

“In 1985, the only photonic chip that could interface to fibre was the III-V semiconductor chip,” says Soref. He wondered if an elemental chip such as silicon could be used, and whether it might even do a better job. He had read in a textbook that silicon is relatively transparent at the 1.30-micron and 1.55-micron wavelengths used for telecom and it inspired him to look at silicon as a material for optical waveguides.

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Tackling system design on a data centre scale

Silicon photonics luminaries series

Interview 1: Andrew Rickman

Silicon photonics has been a recurring theme in the career of Andrew Rickman. First, as a researcher looking at the feasibility of silicon-based optical waveguides, then as founder of Bookham Technologies, and after that as a board member of silicon photonics start-up, Kotura.

Andrew Rickman

Now as CEO of start-up Rockley Photonics, his company is using silicon photonics alongside its custom ASIC and software to tackle a core problem in the data centre: how to connect more and more servers in a cost effective and scaleable way.

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Photonics and optics: interchangeable yet different

Why is it fibre-optics, and why is it not the semiconductor photonic amplifier? It is all to do with a systems perspective versus a device perspective. An industry debate about optics and photonics.

Many terms in telecom are used interchangeably. Terms gain credibility with use but over time things evolve. For example, people understand what is meant by the term carrier [of traffic] or operator [of a network] and even the term incumbent [operator] even though markets are now competitive and 'telephony' is no longer state-run.

"For me, optics is the equivalent of electrical, and photonics is the equivalent of electronics - LSI, VLSI chips and the like" - Mehdi Asghari

Operators - ex-incumbents or otherwise - also do more that oversee the network and now provide complex services. But of course they differ from service providers such as the over-the-top players [third-party providers delivering services over an operator's infrastructure, rather than any theatrical behaviour] or internet content providers. 

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Q&A with photonics pioneer, Richard Soref - Part 1

Richard Soref has spent over 50 years researching photonics, contributing groundbreaking work in the areas of liquid crystals, silicon photonics and the broader topic of mid-infrared wavelengths and Group IV photonics. For 27 years he was employed at the Air Force Research Laboratory. He has also worked at the Sperry Research Center, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and is now a research professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

In part 1 of a two-part interview with Gazettabyte, he details his research interests, explains what is meant by Group IV photonics, and discusses why photonics has not matched the semiconductor industry in terms of integration, and how that could change. 

Optics is a seemingly small subset of physics but really optics is a huge field with a deep, variegated nature waiting to be discovered

Richard Soref

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