抄録
Developing ultra-small optical devices and integrating them are quite useful for realizing energy effi cient
optical devices and also constructing ICT systems with newly introducing such optical devices. For this
purpose, silicon photonics is quite promising. In this report, we briefl y review recent silicon photonics
technology trends and then focus on optical switching devices based on silicon photonics. A silicon
thermo-optical switch element is driven with low heating power. To integrate many elements and
construct functional devices with energy effi ciency, we need to establish several points, such as high
uniformity, polarization independence, and ambient temperature independence. We demonstrate high
extinction ratio switching of the 1 × 8 optical switch with meeting above-mentioned points for energy
efficiency. Such optical switches can be applied to R-OADMs in photonic networks, which provide
fl exible optical path setup and thus contribute to energy effi cient systems.
