Silicon Photonics: CMOS Going Optical [Scanning the Issue]

For almost 50 years, silicon microelectronics has been the engine of the modern information revolution. Complex microprocessors, dense memory circuits, and other digital and analog electronics produced by the $100 billion silicon industry mainly serve a single goal - to process more and more data faster and faster using smaller and smaller components. In this everlasting quest, the silicon industry has successfully overcome many critical issues that were initially considered to be impassible road blocks. Recent progress in silicon compatible photonics is driving high density integration of photonic and electronic components manufactured by CMOS-based technology on the same platform.This Special Issue presents a set of review papers addressing major challenges and summarizing recent progress in the several subfields of Si-based photonics.