Loading...
News Article

Light for future circuits

News
Important breakthrough towards silicon-based all-optical integrated circuits
The April issue of the premier scientific magazine Nature Photonics published the first experimental proof of all-optical ultra-fast communication signal processing with silicon-based devices for transmission speeds above 100Gbit/s.The paper results from the collaboration between University of Karlsruhe, Germany; IMEC, Leuven, Belgium; Lehigh University, USA and ETH Zürich, Switzerland. The achievements are a key step towards the development of complex silicon-based photonic integrated circuits.

All-optical signal processing is particularly of interest in telecommunications applications, where speed, power and cost are crucial. A key element to enable all-optical processing is optical waveguides with highly nonlinear and ultra-fast performance. Researchers from University of Karlsruhe, IMEC and its associated laboratory INTEC at Ghent University, Lehigh University and ETH Zürich fabricated an innovative optical waveguide structure by combining deep-ultraviolet lithography, standard CMOS processing and organic molecular beam deposition. This so-called silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) approach enables the fabrication of waveguides which pave the way towards all-optical processing, where photons do no longer need to be converted to electrons. This is considered to be one of the most promising ways to handle the rapidly increasing global communication traffic.

All optical demultiplexing of a 170.8Gbit/s telecommunication signal to 42.7Gbit/s was performed using four-wave mixing. This is the fastest silicon photonic optical signal processing demonstrated to date. This experiment proved the viability of the SOH waveguides for all-optical processing of broadband telecommunication signals.

With the SOH approach, some inherent limitations of silicon could be overcome. Silicon-based technology, in particular silicon-on-insulator

(SOI) technology, has already proven very successful for the fabrication of various passive linear optical devices such as filters. The development of ultra-fast active Si-based functionalities, such as all-optical switching, remained challenging due to the slow dynamics caused by unwanted non-linear effects in silicon. So far, the data rate achieved by using bare silicon waveguides was limited to only 40Gbit/s. The SOH approach overcomes this intrinsic limitation - thus enabling data rates above 100Gbit/s - by combining the best of two worlds: mature CMOS processing is used to fabricate the waveguide, and organic molecular beam deposition is used to cover it with organic molecules.

These molecules efficiently transfer all-optical interaction without introducing significant absorption. The ability of the organic material to homogeneously fill the slot between the waveguides is a key feature of the deposition process. The silicon circuits were designed by researchers of the University of Karlsruhe in a fabless way, and were fabricated through the ePIXfab service on IMEC's 200mm silicon photonics platform.

ePIXfab is a European funded initiative coordinated by IMEC to allow cost-effective fabless prototyping in wafer-scale silicon photonics technology for R&D. ePIXfab runs multi-project wafer shuttles in which designs from world-wide users share mask and processing costs.

""



Lightwave Logic receives ECOC Innovation Award for Hybrid PIC/Optical Integration Platform
Coherent wins ECOC award for datacentre innovation
HyperLight announces $37 million funding round
Jabil expands silicon photonics capabilities
Ephos raises $8.5 million for glass-based photonic chips
Designing for manufacture: PAM-4 transmitters using segmented-electrode Mach-Zehnder modulators
OpenLight and Epiphany partner on PIC ecosystem
NewPhotonics and SoftBank team up on advanced photonics
POET and Mitsubishi collaborate on 3.2T optical engines
Integrated photonic platforms: The case for SiC
Integrating high-speed germanium modulators with silicon photonics and fast electronics
Lightium Secures $7 Million Seed Funding
Revolutionising optoelectronics with high-precision bonding
Fraunhofer IMS invites participation in PIC engineering runs
Advances in active alignment engines for efficient photonics device test and assembly
Aeva announces participation at IAA Transportation 2024
Sumitomo Electric announces participation in ECOC 2024
Quside receives NIST certification for quantum entropy source
DustPhotonics launches industry-first merchant 1.6T silicon photonics engine
Arelion and Ciena announce live 1.6T wave data transmission
DGIST leads joint original semiconductor research with the EU
POET Technologies reorganises engineering team
A silicon chip for 6G communications
South Dakota Mines wins $5 million from NSF for Quantum Materials Institute
HieFo indium phosphide fab resumes production
Coherent launches new lasers for silicon photonics transceivers
AlixLabs wins funding from PhotonHub Europe
Sandia National Labs and Arizona State University join forces
Perovskite waveguides for nonlinear photonics
A graphene-based infrared emitter
Atom interferometry performed with silicon photonics
A step towards combining the conventional and quantum internet

×
Search the news archive

To close this popup you can press escape or click the close icon.
Logo
x
Logo
×
Register - Step 1

You may choose to subscribe to the PIC Magazine, the PIC Newsletter, or both. You may also request additional information if required, before submitting your application.


Please subscribe me to:

 

You chose the industry type of "Other"

Please enter the industry that you work in:
Please enter the industry that you work in: