Silicon photonics has emerged as a critical enabling technology for a diverse range of applications, from high-speed data communication and computing to advanced sensing and quantum information processing. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent progress in the foundational passive devices that underpin this technological revolution. We survey the state of the art in fundamental building blocks, including strip, rib, and silicon nitride waveguides, with a focus on achieving ultra-low propagation loss. The review details essential components for light coupling and splitting, such as grating couplers, edge couplers, multimode interference couplers, and directional couplers, citing their typical performance metrics. Key wavelength filtering and routing components, including high-Q ring resonators, Mach–Zehnder interferometers, and arrayed waveguide gratings, are analyzed. Furthermore, we provide a comparative overview of the capabilities of major photonic foundries operating on a multi-project wafer model. The paper concludes by discussing persistent challenges in packaging and polarization management, and explores future trends driven by co-packaged optics, inverse design methodologies, and the expansion of silicon photonics into new application domains.
Liu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.