Expand this Topic clickable element to expand a topic
Skip to content
Optica Publishing Group

Ultra-low-energy all-CMOS modulator integrated with driver

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

We report the first sub-picojoule per bit (400fJ/bit) operation of a silicon modulator intimately integrated with a driver circuit and embedded in a clocked digital transmitter. We show a wall-plug power efficiency below 400µW/Gbps for a 130nm SOI CMOS carrier-depletion ring modulator flip-chip integrated to a 90nm bulk Si CMOS driver circuit. We also demonstrate stable error-free transmission of over 1.5 petabits of data at 5Gbps over 3.5 days using the integrated modulator without closed-loop ring resonance tuning. Small signal measurements of the CMOS ring modulator, sans circuit, showed a 3dB bandwidth in excess of 15GHz at 1V of reverse bias, indicating that further increases in transmission rate and reductions of energy-per-bit is possible while retaining compatibility with CMOS drive voltages.

©2010 Optical Society of America

1. Introduction

Silicon photonics (SiP) is envisioned as a promising technology solution for low latency, high bandwidth intra-system interconnections in future computing systems [1]. A universal requirement for implementing these system architectures is the dense integration of ultra energy-efficient silicon photonic links, beginning with picojoule-per-bit links and scaling down to hundreds of femtojoule-per-bit in the near future [25]. There has been a great deal of effort put into the fabrication of silicon-on-insulator modulator devices at high-speed [614]. While these experiments have shown the feasibility of high-speed modulation and the potential for low-power operation, they have not simultaneously demonstrated compact size, CMOS driver integration, low-power, and the ability to be manufactured in a silicon CMOS foundry. We present the first three-dimensional integration of micro-ring resonators manufactured in a CMOS SOI photonics platform intimately integrated to a 90nm bulk CMOS circuit. We demonstrate: (i) resonator device fabrication compatibility with a commercial 130nm CMOS process; (ii) compatibility of device bias and drive voltages with an ultra-fine-line (sub-100nm) CMOS circuit platform; (iii) sub-picojoule per bit data modulation using the hybrid CMOS photonic modulator; (iv) insertion of the driver-integrated silicon photonic modulator into a clocked digital link; and (v) stable error free data transmission of over 1.5 petabits of data using the micro-resonator devices, corresponding to a raw bit-error-rate below 10−15.

2. All-CMOS driver-integrated silicon photonic modulator

2.1 Chip-on-board packaging of the integrated silicon modulator

To integrate the silicon photonic modulator with VLSI driver, we used a custom micro-solder technology to create a hybrid “CMOS photonic-bridge” [2]. One of the key elements of an energy efficient photonic link is a low-power transmitter, requiring three critical sub-components: an energy efficient modulator; a low power driver circuit; and intimate integration of these two components with low parasitics. Ultimately, silicon photonic devices are expected to be integrated on the same silicon on insulator (SOI) platform or possibly bulk silicon platform [15] as their driving circuits to minimize electrical parasitics and maximize cost benefits deriving from mass production. Unfortunately, circuits and photonic devices presently have contradictory requirements on buried oxide (BOX) thickness and other parameters. For both thermal and performance considerations, circuits generally require a very thin BOX, while photonic devices prefer a thicker BOX for better light confinement in silicon waveguides. Manufacturing the photonic devices and their corresponding driver circuits on different CMOS wafers offers some advantages, since the photonic devices can be optimized without comprising the circuit performance, and a state-of-the-art CMOS technology node can be used for circuits. However, this necessitates that the electrical parasitics must be minimized.

Hybrid integration has been successfully demonstrated in earlier work with III-V surface-normal modulators devices on silicon [16] with over 8K bumps per chip [17], and optical device pitches as dense as 35microns [18]. Such integrated modulator plus driver circuits resulted in a reported transmitter energy efficiency of 2.6pJ/bit [19]. This flip-chip technology has been further scaled to 10micron bump pads demonstrated in arrays [20], although the minimum device pitch has typically been limited by the size and pitch of the optical devices as well as optical system I/O considerations. The ability to access the photonic components through waveguides makes it possible to achieve smaller device sizes, with lower total device capacitance. In order to retain the performance advantages gained from separate optimization of the CMOS circuits and the silicon nanophotonic devices, we used a flip-chip integration technique for this work, modified for silicon-to-SOI chip integration, with a total pad + bump capacitance estimated between 20 and 25fF.

The CMOS photonic modulator chip was flip-chip integrated directly above a CMOS driver chip as detailed in Section 2.4. The hybrid transmitter chip assembly was then die-attached and wire-bonded to a printed circuit board (PCB) as shown in Fig. 1 . The photonic chip was then placed on a heat sink. We achieved stable error-free transmission with a bit-error-rate lower than 10−15 at a data rate of 5Gbps. No active temperature control was needed to maintain error-free operation during over 84 hours of testing. The silicon modulator with integrated driver achieved a record-low power consumption of below 400fJ/bit. These results indicate that micro-resonator based modulators can provide stable and efficient modulation without dynamic closed-loop bias setting and temperature control, using a chip-on-board package and a heat sink for thermal management.

 figure: Fig. 1

Fig. 1 Flip-chip integrated chip-on-board silicon photonic all CMOS driver integrated modulator. The blow-up picture shows a 3-port CMOS ring modulator with GSG bonding pads.

Download Full Size | PDF

2.2 Depletion-mode CMOS photonic ring modulator

Significant progress has been made on the development of high performance modulators on silicon, including Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) based silicon photonic modulators using either carrier injection or depletion [79]. Such modulators have been integrated with drivers in [7], but do not meet the energy targets stated above. On the other hand, electro-absorption modulators based on quantum confined stark effect (QCSE) in SiGe quantum wells [10]; Franz-Keldysh (FK) effect in tensile strained Ge-on-Si [11]; evanescent coupled III-V on SOI devices [12]; and silicon micro-disc resonator based modulators [13] have been shown to be promising candidates for lowering energy requirements. But none of the reported work has demonstrated low power operation of a modulator integrated with corresponding CMOS VLSI driver circuits. High-speed operation of compact ring modulators using carrier injection has been demonstrated up to 18Gbps [6]. However, these devices were limited by carrier life times, and a pre-emphasized electrical drive signal (Vpp = 4 V plus +/−2 V pre-emphasized pulse) was needed, making it very challenging to design a low-power modulator driver compatible with CMOS voltage levels. To avoid bandwidth limits resulting from carrier lifetimes and to secure compatibility with CMOS drive voltages, we employed a reverse-biased carrier-depletion ring modulator.

We designed and fabricated a carrier-depletion ring of 15μm in radius, coupled to two waveguides, using the Luxtera-Freescale 130nm SOI CMOS process [7]. As is generally accepted, it can be challenging to obtain stable operation with a high-Q resonator based devices because they can be sensitive to temperature changes. A lower Q device can potentially offer better stability, at the cost of a lower extinction ratio (ER) in modulation. To balance the stability of the device versus its modulation quality, we used a device with a “medium” Q which was a three-port (optical) device with GSG bonding pads, as shown in Fig. 1. Grating couplers were used for the through waveguide and add or drop port with surface normal optical coupling. The pitch for the grating couplers was selected to be 250μm to match the pitch of arrayed fibers in silicon V-grooves. The two through ports were used as the modulator Optical I/O. In this device, a third optical port was available for monitoring the optical quality of the device and/or the modulated optical signal (bar-state) of the transmission. In practice, we did not use this output for the experiments reported here. The gap between the bus waveguide and the ring was 420nm.

DC characterization was performed on die using both electrical probes and arrayed fiber probes. Figure 2 shows the through-port (Port1 to Port 3) spectral profile of one of the ring resonances for different reverse bias voltages of 0V, 1V and 2V respectively. From these measurements, we obtained a ring resonator Q of approximately 8300, and a wavelength shift of approximately 10pm/V. With a voltage swing of 2V, a modulation with about 3dB extinction ratio (ER) and a 6dB insertion loss could be achieved, as indicated by the arrow in Fig. 2. Note that y-axis in Fig. 2 represents the optical power of the ring output, not the loss. The input power from the fiber to the chip was about −8dBm, corresponding to a total fiber coupling loss of about 4dB to and from the chip.

 figure: Fig. 2

Fig. 2 Resonance spectrum at different bias voltages of a CMOS carrier depletion ring modulator.

Download Full Size | PDF

The measured small signal electro-optic response of such a device revealed a 3dB bandwidth of about 15GHz with 1V reverse bias, as depicted in Fig. 3a . We further tested the device RF performance by applying electrical modulation signal with 2V swing at the device using RF probe. Figure 3b showed a clean and open “eye” diagram of the modulator operating at data rate of 5Gbps. An ER better than 3dB was achieved at 5Gbps, confirming the DC measurement results.

 figure: Fig. 3

Fig. 3 Ring modulator device performance: (a) measured ring modulator EO frequency response at 1V reverse bias; (b) 5Gbps “eye” diagram of the modulator driven by un-terminated RF probe, showing an extinction ratio of 3dB with a 2V swing at the device.

Download Full Size | PDF

In order to better understand its performance at high speed and to correctly design the driver circuits, we extracted a small-signal circuit model of the micro-ring resonator by measuring the S parameters of the device using a network analyzer and a reference photo detector with known response (Fig. 4 .). In this circuit model, CP represents the capacitance between the electrodes (dominated by the contact pads) through the top dielectrics and air, CJ denotes the capacitance in the reverse-biased diode junction, RS denotes the diode series resistance, COX denotes the capacitance through the dielectric and Si layers, and RSi is the resistance in Si layer.

 figure: Fig. 4

Fig. 4 Carrier depletion CMOS ring modulator small-signal circuit model.

Download Full Size | PDF

The micro-ring resonator circuit parameters were extracted by curve fitting the measured S11 data. To fit the circuit model correctly, a fast numerical search algorithm was employed with appropriate initial values to find the best fit parameters. The results indicate that the device had a 20fF pad capacitance, and a junction capacitance between 15~30fF. Table 1 shows the parasitic values extracted at different bias voltages, and Fig. 5 shows the curve fitting results at a bias of 1V. From Fig. 5, one can see that the quality of the fit up to 15GHz (i.e. the 3dB bandwidth of the device) was good. Using these parameters, we calculated a micro-ring energy of approximately 120fJ/bit when modulated by pseudo-random data with a 2V swing. We believe this modulation energy can be further improved by reducing the ring size and the capacitance of the contact pads.

Tables Icon

Table 1. Circuit parameters extracted for the depletion ring modulator at different bias voltages.

 figure: Fig. 5

Fig. 5 Curve fitting for measured S11 of the ring modulator at 1V reverse bias using the circuit model in Fig. 4.

Download Full Size | PDF

2.3 CMOS VLSI driver chip

The circuit model indicates that the carrier depletion ring modulator appears as a capacitance, in series with various contact parasitics. A simple inverter can be used to drive a small capacitive load. However, as discussed above, a 2V swing was required to achieve an acceptable ER. We cannot simply apply arbitrary high voltages to a simple inverter driver, as voltages higher than 1.2V in 90nm CMOS (or higher than 1V in a 40nm technology) will overstress and degrade transistors.

To be able to drive high swings, we used a cascode driver circuit architecture [21] where the 1V digital input is replicated into two versions, one shifted in voltage from the other. These inputs drive inverters with different voltage references, and these inverters in turn drive the rails of a final driver, as depicted in Fig. 6 . With proper timing [22], each transistor only sees voltage less than 1V while the whole circuit issues an effective swing of up to 2V across the device.

 figure: Fig. 6

Fig. 6 Cascode modulator driver circuits with 2V voltage swing.

Download Full Size | PDF

Considering the clock rate of computing systems is currently at 5GHz or lower, we designed the photonic driver circuit for 5Gbps operation to avoid excessive serialization and de-serialization latency in real systems. The modulator itself has a much higher 3dB modulation bandwidth of 15GHz (Fig. 3a). In addition, the driver chip was designed to interface to an external clock/data input from a bit-error-rate tester (BERT). The BERT sends high-speed clock and data signals (at 5Gbps) into the chip over a wire bonded interface. Once on the chip, the data is sent across the chip through digital flip-flops, and clocked using a simple but effective clock-forwarding distribution. Each flop has an output tap connected to a level shifter and then to a split-input modulator driver, as shown in Fig. 7 . This driver then drives a hybrid-bonded optical modulator. This system emulates a real system application, with on-chip data sent across the die and locally latched before being driven onto a modulator [23].

 figure: Fig. 7

Fig. 7 Schematic view of the insertion of the integrated transmitter into a clocked digital link.

Download Full Size | PDF

The VLSI driver chip was fabricated in a commercial 90nm CMOS process. A picture of the driver chip with multiple arrays of modulator drivers is shown in Fig. 8 .

 figure: Fig. 8

Fig. 8 90nm CMOS driver chip with 330 digitally clocked low power modulator drivers, high speed digital I/Os and other test circuitry.The blow-up shows the GSG pads of one modulator driver with under-bump metallization.

Download Full Size | PDF

2.4 Flip-chip integration of the hybrid photonic bridge

The conceptual view of modulator chip and driver VLSI chip integration is shown in Fig. 9 . Once fabricated, both the modulator chip and the VLSI chip were first processed to add under-bump-metallization (UBM) to the bonding pads using electroless plating to serve as both strong adhesion layer and diffusion barrier, as well as to enable micro solder bumps to have low resistance contact to the pads. Low profile and small foot-print micro-solder bumps were added to the pads on the modulator chip after UBM with a few microns of vertical compliance. Two post-processed chips were then integrated together using flip-chip bonding.

 figure: Fig. 9

Fig. 9 Schematic of hybrid modulator and driver chip integration using micro bumps.

Download Full Size | PDF

The hybrid chip assembly was die-attached and wire bonded to a test PCB board for power, control and high speed digital I/O connections. Photos of the flip-chip bonded chip assembly (both front view and back view) are shown in Fig. 10a and Fig. 10b. The digital photonic transmitter prototype is shown in Fig. 10c, with the CMOS VLSI driver chip facing up and the CMOS SOI photonic modulator chip facing down.

 figure: Fig. 10

Fig. 10 Photos of the hybrid chip assembly, with VLSI driver chip facing up in (a) and down in (b). (c) is a photo of the integrated transmitter, showing hybrid bonded VLSI driver chip (facing up) and modulator chip (facing down) wire bonded on a test PCB.

Download Full Size | PDF

3. Performance testing and results

Knowing that resonator based device could be sensitive to ambient temperature changes, we attached a copper heat sink directly to the modulator chip (as shown in Fig. 1), and controlled the airflow to the integrated modulator plus driver. The heat sink is a custom made copper block with dimension of 25 × 65 × 35mm, and polished contact surface to the chip for better thermal conduction. This simple passive thermal management accomplished very stable operation. The resonance of the ring modulator was stabilized within a few pm (limited by the repeatability of the tunable laser used for resonance scan) for hours of operation with all the on-chip digital data buffers, and clock distribution turned on (consuming a total of about 1W power). Figure 11 shows the resonance measurement results of 2 hours. The resonance wavelengths of all the measurements are summarized in Table 1. In 2 hours, the ring resonance was stable within +/−5pm with a standard deviation of 2.8pm, in which about +/−1pm (specified repeatability) was from the Agilent tunable laser source, 81680A, used for this measurement. Since the thermal induced ring resonance drift is a much slower event than the data modulation rate. Imaging the three resonance profiles in Fig. 2, corresponding to 0V,1V,and 2V reverse bias voltage respectively, red-shift or blue-shift 5pm, the output modulation will maintain similar extinction ratio and suffer from a small insertion loss variation, estimated to be less around 0.5dB. Hence, stable operation is expected.

 figure: Fig. 11

Fig. 11 Driver-integrated modulator thermal stability measurement results indicating stable operation possible with simple passive thermal management.

Download Full Size | PDF

Tables Icon

Table 2. Measured ring resonance wavelength in 2 hours.

The driver-integrated modulator was embedded in a test environment representative of a clocked digital link. The input to the modulator driver was driven by a second board (not shown) through a flex connector. The high speed signal traveled over several inches of trace leading up to the connector, and additional traces after the connector on the test board shown above. These signals then passed through short wire-bonds to the CMOS driver chip. The river chip was outfitted with CML I/O pads which then translated the input signals to full-logic-swing on-chip 5Gbps signals on the CMOS chip. The driver chip was also clocked by feeding a separate high-speed external clock to the chip. This clock was synchronized with the input data to test the device. In practice, the VLSI chip consumed over 1W, of which almost all was consumed by the high-speed electrical I/O and the on-chip clock buffers. This total thermal load was presented to the modulator chip and the heat sink. The integrated modulator were then tested by feeding 5 Gbps PRBS (231-1) data (from pattern generator of a Bit-Error-Rate-Tester (BERT)) into the chip using the high-speed input pads. An off-the-shelf receiver received the modulated optical signal. The converted electrical data signal was then fed to the error detector on the BERT. No error was observed in over 3.5 days during which more than 1015 bits of data were transmitted. The “eye” diagram of the modulator output is shown in Fig. 12a with BER contours. The deterministic jitter shown as multiple crossings is due to a timing error related to non-optimal clock loading [23]. Even with the presence of these system non-idealities, we were able to obtain error-free performance over 3.5 days.

 figure: Fig. 12

Fig. 12 The high speed performance characterization results of the integrated “all” CMOS silicon photonic modulator. (a)“Eye” diagram of the modulator output at 5Gbps; (b) 10dB power penalty compared to commercial LiNbO3 modulator.

Download Full Size | PDF

The performance of the driver-integrated silicon photonic modulator was further compared to a high quality LiNbO3 modulator using a common lightwave receiver. As indicated by the BER vs. receiving power plots shown in Fig. 12b, there is about 10dB power penalty for the silicon photonic driver-integrated resulting from low ER, high jitter from the clock synchronization error discussed earlier, and possibly nonlinearities associated with the modulation of the ring. A much cleaner “eye” with no double crossing is expected using driver circuits with the clock loading design error corrected. The low extinction ratio is expected to be improved by designing the ring with higher Q, and optimized waveguide and pn junction design with higher E/O efficiency.

We directly measured a total driver-integrated modulator power consumption of 1.95mW (excluding laser power) during extended operation by measuring the supply voltages and currents. This corresponds to a energy of approximately 390fJ/bit and represents the entire power of the ring modulator and its CMOS driver, as well as any excess power required to drive circuit parasitics including internal wiring and flip-chip pads.

4. Conclusions

As a first step towards an energy-efficient optical link, we have demonstrated, for the first time, a flip-chip integrated all-CMOS photonic modulator with driver using a carrier-depletion ring modulator and 90nm CMOS driver circuits. The integrated modulator was embedded in a digital system with digital data/clock interface and on-chip clock distribution. It achieved a 3dB extinction ratio with an insertion loss of 6dB, and was operated error-free with an ultra-low power consumption directly measured below 400fJ/bit at a data rate of 5Gbps. Our modeling and analysis indicates that the CMOS ring modulator alone consumed approximately 120fJ/bit. Contrary to general expectations, we achieved stable operation and error-free transmission using the resonator-based modulator with medium Q and simple thermal management without active closed-loop control. The tradeoff between stability and modulation performance needs further investigation. In practice, we expect that monitoring and control will still be necessary in order to tune the modulator wavelength and bias point and to ensure correct operation in the event of ambient temperature changes or local temperature gradients and will be considered in future work. The measured power consumption does not include other important link elements, including the optical loss and associated laser power, or the energy requirements of the receiver. Nonetheless, this successful demonstration of a low energy silicon photonic modulator with integrated CMOS driver is a significant step towards a complete sub-pJ/bit link that is expected to be critical for future inter-chip and intra-chip interconnect applications.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported, in part, by DARPA under Agreement No. HR0011-08-09-0001. The authors thank Dr. Jag Shah of DARPA MTO for his inspiration and support of this program. The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this article/presentation are those of the author/presenter and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the Department of Defense. Approved for Public Release. Distribution Unlimited.

References and links

1. D. A. B. Miller, “Device requirements for optical interconnects to Silicon chips,” Proc. IEEE 97(7), 1166–1185 (2009). [CrossRef]  

2. A. V. Krishnamoorthy, R. Ho, X. Zheng, H. Schwetman, J. Lexau, P. Koka, G. Li, I. Shubin, and J. E. Cunningham, “Computer systems based on silicon photonic interconnects,” Proc. IEEE 97(7), 1337–1361 (2009). [CrossRef]  

3. D. Vantrease, R. Schreiber, M. Monchiero, M. McLarenz, N. P. Jouupi, M. Fiorentino, A. Davis, N. Binkert, R. G. Beausolei, and J. H. Ahn, “Corona: System Implications of Emerging Nanophotonic Technology,” ISCA '08, pp. 153–164, June 2008.

4. A. Shacham, K. Bergman, and L. P. Carloni, “On the Design of a Photonic Network-on-Chip,” Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Networks-on-Chip (NOCS) 2007, pp.53–64, 2007.

5. C. Batten, A. Joshi, J. Orcutt, A. Khilo, B. Moss, C. Holzwarth, H. Li, H. Smith, J. Hoyt, F. Kartner, R. Ram, V. Stojanovic, and K. Asanovic, “Building manycore processor-to-DRAM network with monolithic silicon photonics,” HOTI 2008, 21–30 (2008).

6. S. Manipatruni, Q. Xu, B. Schmidt, J. Shakya, and M. Lipson, “High speed carrier injection 18Gb/s silicon micro-ring electro-optic modulator,” in proceedings of IEEE on the Annual Meeting of the IEEE LEOS (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, 2007), pp.537–538, 2007.

7. T. Pinguet, V. Sadagopan, A. Mekis, B. Analui, D. Kucharski, and S. Gloeckner, “A 1550 nm, 10 Gbps optical modulator with integrated driver in 130 nm CMOS,” Proceedings of IEEE conference on Group IV Photonics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, 2007), pp.1–3, 2007.

8. L. Liao, A. Liu, J. Basak, H. Nguyen, M. Paniccia, D. Rubin, Y. Chetrit, R. Cohen, and N. Izhaky, “40 Gbit/s silicon optical modulator for high speed applications,” Electron. Lett. 43(22), 1196–1197 (2007). [CrossRef]  

9. W. M. J. Green, M. J. Rooks, L. Sekaric, and Y. A. Vlasov, “Ultra-compact, low RF power, 10 Gb/s silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator,” Opt. Express 15(25), 17106–17113 (2007). [CrossRef]   [PubMed]  

10. J. E. Roth, O. Fidaner, R. K. Schaevitz, Y. H. Kuo, T. I. Kamins, J. S. Harris, and D. A. B. Miller, “Optical modulator on silicon employing germanium quantum wells,” Opt. Express 15(9), 5851–5859 (2007). [CrossRef]   [PubMed]  

11. J. Liu, M. Beals, A. Pomerene, S. Bernardis, R. Sun, J. Chen, L. C. Kimerling, and J. Michel, “Ultralow energy, Integrated GeSi electroabsorption modulators on SOI,” in Proceedings of IEEE conference on Group IV Photonics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, 2008), pp.10–12, 2008.

12. Y. H. Kuo, H. W. Chen, and J. E. Bowers, “High speed hybrid silicon evanescent electroabsorption modulator,” Opt. Express 16(13), 9936–9941 (2008). [CrossRef]   [PubMed]  

13. M. R. Watts, D. C. Trotter, R. W. Young, and A. L. Lentine, “Ultralow power silicom microdisk modulators and switches,” Proceedings of IEEE conference on Group IV Photonics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, 2008), pp.4–6, 2008.

14. D. Marris-Morini, L. Vivien, G. Rasigade, J.-M. Fedeli, E. Cassan, X. Le Roux, P. Crozat, S. Maine, A. Lupu, P. Lyan, P. Rivallin, M. Halbwax, and S. Laval, “Recent progress in high-speed silicon-based optical modulators,” Proc. IEEE 97(7), 1199–1215 (2009). [CrossRef]  

15. J. S. Orcutt, K. Anatol, M. A. Popovic, C. W. Holzwarth, B. Moss, H. Li, M. S. Dahlem, T. D. Bonifield, F. X. Kartner, E. P. Ippen, and J. L. Hoyt, R. J. ram, and V. Stojanovic, “Demonstration of an electronic photonic integrated circuit in a commercial scaled bulk cmos process,” in Proc. CLEO/IQEC Conf. Lasers Electro Opt/Intl. Quant. Elec. Conf., March 2008.

16. K. W. Goossen, J. E. Cunningham, and W. Y. Jan, “GaAs 850 nm modulators solder-bonded to silicon,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 5(7), 776–778 (1993). [CrossRef]  

17. A. L. Lentine, K. W. Goossen, J. A. Walker, L. M. F. Chirovsky, L. A. D’Asaro, S. P. Hui, B. J. Tseng, R. E. Leibenguth, J. E. Cunningham, W. Y. Jan, J.-M. Kuo, D. W. Dahringer, D. P. Kossives, D. D. Bacon, G. Livescu, R. L. Morrison, R. A. Novotny, and D. B. Buchholz, “High-speed Optoelectronic VLSI Switching Chip with >4000 Optical I/O Based on Flip-Chip Bonding of MQW Modulators and Detectors to Silicon CMOS,” lEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 2(1), 77–84 (1996). [CrossRef]  

18. A. V. Krishnamoorthy, J. E. Ford, F. E. Kiamilev, R. G. Rozier, S. Hunsche, K. W. Goossen, B. Tseng, J. A. Walker, J. E. Cunningham, W. Y. Jan, and M. C. Nuss, “The AMOEBA switch: an optoelectronic switch for multiprocessor networking using dense WDM,” lEEE J,” Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 5(2), 261–275 (1999). [CrossRef]  

19. A. V. Krishnamoorthy, T. K. Woodward, K. W. Goossen, J. A. Walker, A. L. Lentine, L. M. F. Chirovsky, S. P. Hui, B. Tseng, R. Leibenguth, J. E. Cunningham, and W. Y. Jan, “Operation of a single-ended 550Mbit/s, 41fJ, hybrid CMOS/MQW receiver-transmitter,” Electron. Lett. 32(8), 764–765 (1996). [CrossRef]  

20. A. V. Krishnamoorthy, K. W. Goossen, L. M. F. Chirovsky, R. G. Rozier, P. Chandramani, W. S. Hobson, S. P. Hui, J. Lopata, J. A. Walker, and L. A. D’Asaro, “16x16 vcsel array flip-chip bonded to CMOS VLSI circuit,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 12(8), 1073–1075 (2000). [CrossRef]  

21. T. Woodward, A. V. Krishnamoorthy, K. W. Goossen, J. A. Walker, B. Tseng, J. Lothian, S. Hui, and R. Leibenguth, “Modulator-driver circuits for optoelectronic VLSI,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 9(6), 839–841 (1997). [CrossRef]  

22. S. Palermo, and M. Horowitz, “High-speed transmitters in 90nm CMOS for high-density optical interconnects,” in Proceedings of IEEE on European Solid-State Circuits Conference (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, 2006), pp.508–511, 2006.

23. R. Ho, J. Lexau, F. Liu, D. Patil, R. Hopkins, E. Alon, N. Pinckney, P. Amberg, X. Zheng, J. E. Cunningham, and A. V. Krishnamoorthy, “Circuits for silicon photonics on a ‘macrochip’, ” IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference 2009, Industry Session 1–3, Nov. 2009.

Cited By

Optica participates in Crossref's Cited-By Linking service. Citing articles from Optica Publishing Group journals and other participating publishers are listed here.

Alert me when this article is cited.


Figures (12)

Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Flip-chip integrated chip-on-board silicon photonic all CMOS driver integrated modulator. The blow-up picture shows a 3-port CMOS ring modulator with GSG bonding pads.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Resonance spectrum at different bias voltages of a CMOS carrier depletion ring modulator.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3 Ring modulator device performance: (a) measured ring modulator EO frequency response at 1V reverse bias; (b) 5Gbps “eye” diagram of the modulator driven by un-terminated RF probe, showing an extinction ratio of 3dB with a 2V swing at the device.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Carrier depletion CMOS ring modulator small-signal circuit model.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5 Curve fitting for measured S11 of the ring modulator at 1V reverse bias using the circuit model in Fig. 4.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6 Cascode modulator driver circuits with 2V voltage swing.
Fig. 7
Fig. 7 Schematic view of the insertion of the integrated transmitter into a clocked digital link.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8 90nm CMOS driver chip with 330 digitally clocked low power modulator drivers, high speed digital I/Os and other test circuitry.The blow-up shows the GSG pads of one modulator driver with under-bump metallization.
Fig. 9
Fig. 9 Schematic of hybrid modulator and driver chip integration using micro bumps.
Fig. 10
Fig. 10 Photos of the hybrid chip assembly, with VLSI driver chip facing up in (a) and down in (b). (c) is a photo of the integrated transmitter, showing hybrid bonded VLSI driver chip (facing up) and modulator chip (facing down) wire bonded on a test PCB.
Fig. 11
Fig. 11 Driver-integrated modulator thermal stability measurement results indicating stable operation possible with simple passive thermal management.
Fig. 12
Fig. 12 The high speed performance characterization results of the integrated “all” CMOS silicon photonic modulator. (a)“Eye” diagram of the modulator output at 5Gbps; (b) 10dB power penalty compared to commercial LiNbO3 modulator.

Tables (2)

Tables Icon

Table 1 Circuit parameters extracted for the depletion ring modulator at different bias voltages.

Tables Icon

Table 2 Measured ring resonance wavelength in 2 hours.

Select as filters


Select Topics Cancel
© Copyright 2024 | Optica Publishing Group. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.