硅光子学在近几年迅猛发展，各国重要的研究机构和产业部门纷纷加入竞争，不断刷新各种器件的性能指标记录。全硅基电光调制器作为该领域中极其重要的研究方向之一，受到国内外同行的广泛关注。随着全硅基电光调制器研究工作的积累和深入，高速率（大于等于50 Gbit/s）、低功耗（小于等于40 fJ/bit）和小尺寸（小于等于100 mm2）等关键性能逐步提升。目前，调制速率的最新研究结果已突破了60 Gbit/s 并向更高目标迈进，未来在极低功耗和规模集成等方面还将出现较大突破，适应巨容量光通信、高密度光互连、大数据光传感等应用技术的需要。

Due to its great achievements over the last few years, silicon photonics is now a focused topic in many conferences and forums. Among the key photonic blocks, an optical modulator based on a silicon substrate is one of the most attractive issues for scientists and engineers. According to the reported state-of-art experimental results, silicon based optical modulators have perfect operation speed (no less than 50 Gbit/s), low power consumption (no more than 40 fJ/bit) and small footprint (no more than 100 mm2). Till now, the most recent tested data rate reaches 60 Gbit/s. More research and development focuse on higher energy efficiency and higher integration density, which are required by optical communication, optical interconnect and optical sensing, to build information infrastructures with ultra-large bandwidth, much high density and very-big data.