Abstract
We show GHz modulation in a 2.5 microm radius silicon micro-ring, with only 150 mV peak-peak drive voltage and an electro-optic modal volume of only 2 microm(3). The swing voltage and the micro-ring modulator are the smallest demonstrations so-far in silicon. The presented approach lays the ground work for a new class of high speed low voltage modulators enabling, seamless integration of nanophotonics with low voltage digital CMOS nano-electronics.
Highlights
Low voltage operation of nanophotonic modulators is an important condition for providing the future bandwidth needs via nanophotonic-electronic integration [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
We demonstrate 1 Gbit/s modulation with a peak-peak drive voltage of only 150 mV
We note that the peak current in the device simulation shown in Fig. 5 is 3 mA, which corresponds to a scaled digital inverter cut-off bandwidth of 10 GHz in a 16 nm CMOS node
Summary
Low voltage operation of nanophotonic modulators is an important condition for providing the future bandwidth needs via nanophotonic-electronic integration [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. We achieve the low drive voltage and ultra low switching energy operation by biasing the modulator near the optimum charge injection efficiency point of the electro-optic device. The top silicon layer (260 nm thick) is used for the passive waveguides and the electro-optic micro-ring modulator. The mechanism for optical modulation is the free carrier dispersion due to the electron/hole concentration in the center of the waveguide [28], which we show in Fig. 2b as a function of voltage. Received 29 Jun 2010; revised Jul 2010; accepted Jul 2010; published 9 Aug 2010 August 2010 / Vol 18, No / OPTICS EXPRESS 18239
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