44 research outputs found
Silicon-organic hybrid devices for high-speed electro-optic signal processing
Among the various elements of the silicon photonics platform, electro-optic IQ modulators play an important role. In this book, silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) integration is used to realize electro-optic IQ modulators for complex signal processing. Leveraging the high nonlinearity of organic materials, SOH IQ modulators provide low energy consumption for high-speed data transmission and frequency shifting. Furthermore, the device design is adapted for commercial foundry processes
Coherent modulation up to 100 GBd 16QAM using silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) devices
We demonstrate the generation of higher-order modulation formats using
silicon-based inphase/quadrature (IQ) modulators at symbol rates of up to 100
GBd. Our devices exploit the advantages of silicon-organic hybrid (SOH)
integration, which combines silicon-on-insulator waveguides with highly
efficient organic electro-optic (EO) cladding materials to enable small drive
voltages and sub-millimeter device lengths. In our experiments, we use an SOH
IQ modulator with a {\pi}-voltage of 1.6 V to generate 100 GBd 16QAM signals.
This is the first time that the 100 GBd mark is reached with an IQ modulator
realized on a semiconductor substrate, leading to a single-polarization line
rate of 400 Gbit/s. The peak-to-peak drive voltages amount to 1.5 Vpp,
corresponding to an electrical energy dissipation in the modulator of only 25
fJ/bit
Electrically packaged silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) I/Q-modulator for 64 GBd operation
Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) electro-optic (EO) modulators combine small
footprint with low operating voltage and hence low power dissipation, thus
lending themselves to on-chip integration of large-scale device arrays. Here we
demonstrate an electrical packaging concept that enables high-density
radio-frequency (RF) interfaces between on-chip SOH devices and external
circuits. The concept combines high-resolution
printed-circuit boards with technically simple metal wire bonds and is amenable
to packaging of device arrays with small on-chip bond pad pitches. In a set of
experiments, we characterize the performance of the underlying RF building
blocks and we demonstrate the viability of the overall concept by generation of
high-speed optical communication signals. Achieving line rates (symbols rates)
of 128 Gbit/s (64 GBd) using quadrature-phase-shiftkeying (QPSK) modulation and
of 160 Gbit/s (40 GBd) using 16-state quadrature-amplitudemodulation (16QAM),
we believe that our demonstration represents an important step in bringing SOH
modulators from proof-of-concept experiments to deployment in commercial
environments
Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) Mach-Zehnder Modulators for 100 Gbit/s On-Off Keying
Electro-optic modulators for high-speed on-off keying (OOK) are key
components of short- and mediumreach interconnects in data-center networks.
Besides small footprint and cost-efficient large-scale production, small drive
voltages and ultra-low power consumption are of paramount importance for such
devices. Here we demonstrate that the concept of silicon-organic hybrid (SOH)
integration is perfectly suited for meeting these challenges. The approach
combines the unique processing advantages of large-scale silicon photonics with
unrivalled electro-optic (EO) coefficients obtained by molecular engineering of
organic materials. In our proof-of-concept experiments, we demonstrate
generation and transmission of OOK signals with line rates of up to 100 Gbit/s
using a 1.1 mm-long SOH Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) which features a
{\pi}-voltage of only 0.9 V. This experiment represents not only the first
demonstration of 100 Gbit/s OOK on the silicon photonic platform, but also
leads to the lowest drive voltage and energy consumption ever demonstrated at
this data rate for a semiconductor-based device. We support our experimental
results by a theoretical analysis and show that the nonlinear transfer
characteristic of the MZM can be exploited to overcome bandwidth limitations of
the modulator and of the electric driver circuitry. The devices are fabricated
in a commercial silicon photonics line and can hence be combined with the full
portfolio of standard silicon photonic devices. We expect that high-speed
power-efficient SOH modulators may have transformative impact on short-reach
optical networks, enabling compact transceivers with unprecedented energy
efficiency that will be at the heart of future Ethernet interfaces at Tbit/s
data rates
Hybrid 2D/3D Photonic Integration for Non-Planar Circuit Topologies
We present a concept for realizing crossing-free photonic integrated circuits (PIC) using 3D freeform waveguides. We prove the viability of the approach using a silicon photonic 4 x 4 switch-andselect device. The method is applicable to a wide range of PIC technologies