The design and fabrication of silicon based IR (Infrared) filters for high-speed optical communication systems are the topic of this thesis. Its novelty is in two aspects: 1) Use of silicon wafers as an optical guiding medium; 2) Use of wafer bonding technique to attach two optical elements together.

The structure consists of two optical waveguides, the bus waveguide and the drop channel waveguide. A ring on top of these waveguides couples them in such a way that only one narrow spectral line is removed from the bus waveguides which propagates in the dropchannel waveguide. The assembly is fabricated using waferbonding technique in silicon. A precise control over the waveguide dimensions, the ring dimensions and the distance between the ring and the waveguide is required for a specific spectral line to be coupled to the dropchannel waveguide. It is hoped that the use of VLSI technologies in fabricating optical elements may therefore advance the area of optical networking and sensing.