Silicon Nanophotonics Fabrication: An innovative graduate course

We report our recent successful experiences related to the development of a transcontinental course in silicon photonics offered by the University of British Columbia in collaboration with CMC Microsystems. The course is offered to students from across Canada and has attracted participants from nearly every Canadian university with an advanced photonics research program. The focus of the course is the rapidly developing field of silicon photonics. Its aim is to provide the students with a breadth of competencies in designing optical circuits and systems using a silicon-on-insulator platform. The students taking the course gain familiarity in design, fabrication, and testing in an area of photonics that is destined to play an increasingly important, and in the long run ubiquitous, role in optical circuitry, impacting on areas such as optical interconnects, communications systems, and sensor systems. The course is structured using a blended-learning pedagogical approach consisting of an on-site workshop followed by design-based e-learning. The students' designs are fabricated using IMEC's passive photonic cSOI process, which is accessed through the European silicon photonics prototyping service ePIXfab. Student projects to date have included the design of integrated-optical circuits using combinations of ring resonators, waveguides, couplers, and photonic crystals for applications such as filters for WDM optical interconnects, demodulators for phase modulated signals, and lab-on-chip sensors.