Organic–inorganic hybrid materials towards passive and active architectures for the next generation of optical networks

The advances in optoelectronics over the last three decades have been quite dramatic, namely the mass manufacturing of low cost integrated circuits, revolutionizing the speed and the capability of computing and communication. However, today’s ever-increasing demand for high-bandwidth data is outgrowing the performance of electronics in many applications, such as in telecommunications where the traffic demand has been increasing steadily and, therefore, the transmission technology requires bandwidth that exceeds the one provided by actual copper based networks. In this context, the fabrication of low-cost integrated optics (IO) devices using sol–gel derived organic–inorganic hybrid (OIH) materials has received increasing attention in the last years. This review will focus on examples of OIHs that can be used in IO devices for the next generation of optical networks. Emphasis will be given to passive (planar and channel waveguides, couplers and multimode interference splitters) and active (lasers and optical amplifiers) optical architectures for long haul/metro and access/indoor networks.