High-speed, low-power optical modulators in silicon

Leuthold, Juerg; Koos, C.; Freude, W.; Alloatti, Luca; Palmer, R.; Korn, D.; Pfeifle, J.; Lauermann, Matthias; Dinu, Raluca; Wehrli, Silvan; Jazbinšek, Mojca; Günter, Peter; Waldow, Michael; Wahlbrink, T.; Bolten, Jens; Fournier, Maryse; Fédéli, Jean-Marc; Bogaerts, Wim; Yu, Hui

doi:10.1109/icton.2013.6603001

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In a lumped configuration, an electronic circuit (driver) charges and discharges the total capacitance at V PP for each data transition [129]. The maximum power consumption of the two phase shifters is given by the energy consumption in a bit time [130]:…”

Section: Graphene Integration On Sinmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Graphene-based integrated photonics for next-generation datacom and telecom

Romagnoli¹,

Sorianello²,

et al. 2018

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Graphene is an ideal material for optoelectronic applications. Its photonic properties give several advantages and complementarities over Si photonics. For example, graphene enables both electro-absorption and electro-refraction modulation with an electro-optical index change exceeding 10 −3 . It can be used for optical add-drop multiplexing with voltage control, eliminating the current dissipation used for the thermal detuning of microresonators, and for thermoelectric-based ultrafast optical detectors that generate a voltage without transimpedance amplifiers. Here, we present our vision for graphene-based integrated photonics. We review graphene-based transceivers and compare them with existing technologies. Strategies for improving power consumption, manufacturability and wafer-scale integration are addressed. We outline a roadmap of the technological requirements to meet the demands of the datacom and telecom markets. We show that graphene based integrated photonics could enable ultrahigh spatial bandwidth density , low power consumption for board connectivity and connectivity between data centres, access networks and metropolitan, core, regional and long-haul optical communications.Photonics is poised to play an increasingly important role in ICT ( Fig. 1a), since the fixed high capacity links are largely based on photonic technologies. Photonic devices need to support ultra-large bandwidth operation, for example, 200 Tb s−1 in a single fibre[9] and >10 Tb s −1 cm −2 in integrated Si photonics chips [10]. To achieve this, the key components of Si photonics, photodetectors and modulators, need very high performances in terms of speed (≥25 Gb s −1 ), footprint (<1 mm 2 ), insertion loss (<4 dB), manufacturability (>10 6 pieces per year) and power consumption (<1 pJ bit −1 ). To date, these requirements have not been fulfilled in one system [11]. Furthermore, in terms of production volumes, photonics is not yet comparable to microelectronics [12], even if the increase in demand for optical networks would, by 2021, lead to an average global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic of 3.3 ZB (zettabytes), corresponding to an average usage data rate of ~800 Tb s −1 (refs[13,14]). In the context of the IoT[7], other applications, including infrared (IR) sensors, biosensors, environmental sensors, metrology, quantum communications and machine vision, will require even larger production volumes [13,15].The telecom network can be divided into three segments: access, aggregation and core (Fig. 1a). The access network is the interface between subscribers and the immediate service provider. The aggregation network aggregates all the input data streams from tributary access networks, converging towards the higher-level core network. The aggregation network includes local and metropolitan networks, which then converge to regional networks. A local area network (LAN) interconnects computers within a limited area, such as a residence, school, laboratory, university or office building. A metropolitan area network (MAN) interconnects us...

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Section: Graphene Integration On Sinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The total capacitance is split into N capacitances along the line. The power required to generate an on-off modulation is [100,130]:…”

Section: Graphene Integration On Sinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Graphene-based integrated photonics for next-generation datacom and telecom

Romagnoli¹,

Sorianello²,

et al. 2018

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“…The basic structure of an SOH Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) is illustrated in Figure 1 (a) [14], [15]. The MZM comprises two SOH phase modulators that are driven in pushpull mode by a single coplanar transmission line in groundsignal-ground (GSG) configuration.…”

Section: A the Soh Device Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) and Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid (POH) Integration

Koos

Leuthold

Freude

et al. 2015

Optical Fiber Communication Conference

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Abstract-Silicon photonics offers tremendous potential for inexpensive high-yield photonic-electronic integration. Besides conventional dielectric waveguides, plasmonic structures can also be efficiently realized on the silicon photonic platform, reducing device footprint by more than an order of magnitude. However, neither silicon nor metals exhibit appreciable second-order optical nonlinearities, thereby making efficient electro-optic modulators challenging to realize. These deficiencies can be overcome by the concepts of silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) and plasmonicorganic hybrid (POH) integration, which combine silicon-oninsulator (SOI) waveguides and plasmonic nanostructures with organic electro-optic cladding materials.Index Terms-Electro-optic modulators, photonic integrated circuits, silicon photonics, plasmonics, nonlinear optical devicesElectro-optic (EO) modulators are key building blocks for highly integrated photonic-electronic circuits on the silicon

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“…In addition, we make an estimation of energy consumption per bit for our device [49]. If our modulator is driven by PRBS signals with the same power level, we estimate the energy consumption per bit for our modulator at the bit rate of 10Gbit/s as 2 1 2 4 bit W CV   = 94.4fJ/bit [26,33,45,49,50]. Note that, in actual high-speed digital modulations, the driving voltage can be smaller than Vπ, in which case a decently clear eye diagram, a high enough extinction ratio and acceptable bit error rate (BER) can be still achieved using lower energy [14,19,33,51,52].…”

Section: Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Broadband energy-efficient optical modulation by hybrid integration of silicon nanophotonics and organic electro-optic polymer

et al. 2015

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Silicon-organic hybrid integrated devices have emerging applications ranging from high-speed optical interconnects to photonic electromagnetic-field sensors. Silicon slot photonic crystal waveguides (PCWs) filled with electro-optic (EO) polymers combine the slow-light effect in PCWs with the high polarizability of EO polymers, which promises the realization of high-performance optical modulators. In this paper, a broadband, power-efficient, low-dispersion, and compact optical modulator based on an EO polymer filled silicon slot PCW is presented. A small voltage-length product of Vπ×L=0.282V×mm is achieved, corresponding to an unprecedented record-high effective in-device EO coefficient (r33) of 1230pm/V. Assisted by a backside gate voltage, the modulation response up to 50GHz is observed, with a 3-dB bandwidth of 15GHz, and the estimated energy consumption is 94.4fJ/bit at 10Gbit/s. Furthermore, lattice-shifted PCWs are utilized to enhance the optical bandwidth by a factor of ~10X over other modulators based on non-band-engineered PCWs and ring-resonators.

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High-speed, low-power optical modulators in silicon

Abstract: More recently, a linear electro-optic effect based on a chemical surface-activation was demonstrated with an estimated value of χ (2) = 9 ± 1 pm/V for the induced nonlinearity. [14].

Cited by 10 publications

References 27 publications

Graphene-based integrated photonics for next-generation datacom and telecom

Graphene-based integrated photonics for next-generation datacom and telecom

Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) and Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid (POH) Integration

Broadband energy-efficient optical modulation by hybrid integration of silicon nanophotonics and organic electro-optic polymer

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