A Silicon Photonic Data Link with a Monolithic Erbium-Doped Laser

Abstract

To meet the increasing demand for data communication bandwidth and overcome the limits of electrical interconnects, silicon photonic technology has been extensively studied, with various photonics devices and optical links being demonstrated. All of the optical data links previously demonstrated have used either heterogeneously integrated lasers or external laser sources. This work presents the first silicon photonic data link using a monolithic rare-earth-ion-doped laser, a silicon microdisk modulator, and a germanium photodetector integrated on a single chip. The fabrication is CMOS compatible, demonstrating data transmission as a proof-of-concept at kHz speed level, and potential data rate of more than 1 Gbps. This work provides a solution for the monolithic integration of laser sources on the silicon photonic platform, which is fully compatible with the CMOS fabrication line, and has potential applications such as free-space communication and integrated LIDAR.

Rare-earth ion doped Al2O3 for active integrated photonics

“…A silicon photonics data link integrating an Er 3+ :Al 2 O 3 -Si 3 N 4 DBR laser similar to the one reported in [35] with a silicon photonics circuit integrating modulators and germanium photodetectors has also been recently demonstrated [95]. These demonstrations show the potential of this material for real-life applications.…”

“…Recently, erbium-doped Al 2 O 3 lasers integrated with Si 3 N 4 waveguides were introduced onto a CMOS-compatible silicon photonic platform to produce a fully integrated system-on-a-chip [76,95].…”

Spectral imaging and spectral LIDAR systems: moving toward compact nanophotonics-based sensing

“…Nanophotonics technology [58], which is based on light-matter interaction at nanoscale dimensions, provides an ideal solution. Numerous compact optics and photonics functional devices have been demonstrated using CMOS-compatible fabrication process [59][60][61][62][63][64][65]. In the past decade, research works on nanophotonics-based spectral imaging and LIDAR systems have also accelerated [28,29,[66][67][68][69].…”

Tellurite glass microcavity resonators integrated on a silicon photonics platform

“…Aluminum oxide glass cavities fabricated in this manner and aligned to silicon nitride bus waveguides have demonstrated high Q factors of greater than 10 6 , 24 with demonstrations of rare earth lasing with erbium 25 and thulium dopants 26 and four wave mixing. 27 Advanced multilayer foundry processes can be used to vertically couple light from silicon nitride to silicon waveguides to combine these devices with electro-optic functionality, [28][29][30] but for lower cost fabrication technology, it would be preferable to be able to couple the resonator directly to the silicon waveguide layer. Although aluminum oxide resonators have been highly successful in combination with silicon nitride waveguides, it is much more difficult to phase match the low refractive index of aluminum oxide (1.65) to a silicon bus waveguide, making alternative glasses more preferable for direct silicon integration.…”

“…These results demonstrate a platform for future integration of nonlinear photonic and rare-earth-doped active tellurite resonators on a silicon photonics platform, for applications including Kerr comb sources for sensing and spectroscopy, 45 laser biosensors for diagnostic systems on a chip, 46 and high-power light sources for communications and detection and ranging. 47…”