56 Gb/s Germanium Waveguide Electro-Absorption Modulator

Abstract

We report a Germanium waveguide electro-absorption modulator with electro-optic bandwidth substantially beyond 50 GHz. The device is implemented in a fully integrated Si photonics platform on 200 mm silicon-on-insulator wafers with 220 nm top Si thickness. Wide open eye diagrams are demonstrated at 1610 nm operation wavelength for nonreturn-to-zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK) modulation at data rates as high as 56 Gb/s. Dynamic extinction ratios up to 3.3 dB are obtained by applying drive voltages of 2 V peak-to-peak, along with an optical insertion loss below 5.5 dB. The device has a low junction capacitance of just 12.8 fF, resulting in 12.8 fJ/bit of dynamic and ∼1.2 mW of static power consumption in typical operating conditions. Wafer-scale performance data are presented and confirm the manufacturability of the device. The demonstrated modulator shows great potential for realizing high-density and low-power silicon photonic transceivers targeting short-reach optical interconnects at serial data rates of 56 Gb/s and beyond.