Off-chip couplers and optical antennas for new applications of silicon photonics

Silicon photonics is a key technology for new interconnects required in data centers and artificial intelligence platforms. Despite the incredible progress made in recent years, the chip's input-output couplers are still a key component whose performance still needs to be improved. New applications like quantum, Lidar or Free Space Optics (FSO) require extremely low loss interconnections demanding couplers with greater efficiency. Also Lidar or FSO communications, demand large area optical antennas capable of emitting highly collimated steerable optical beams with low divergence angle. In this paper we will review some of the recent activity, developed at the Photonics&RF Research Lab at Málaga University, to improve the performance of input-output surface couplers.