Abstract

It is now generally recognized that one likely scenario in which photonics is used in a switching environment is where it is integrated with electronics. This concept takes advantage of the greater capacity of electronics for complexity, functionality, and memory, and the greater capacity of photonics for communications. Silicon electronics seems to be the most effective technology where complex systems such as microprocessors or memory is concerned. Since the benefit of increased communication capacity to the chip is most attractive when the chip contains a great number of computing elements, it appears that the strongest impact of photonics will be as optical input/output for silicon integrated circuits. Since simultaneous operation of large arrays (e.g., thousands) of surface-emitting lasers has not been demonstrated, and their operation would be thermally problematic, whereas such arrays of surface-normal modulators have been demonstrated, it appears that surface-normal modulators grown on silicon ICs are the logical device for this application. In this paper we demonstrate a multiple quantum well (MQW) modulator grown on a silicon IC that was obtained from a standard 0.9-μm linewidth fabrication line. The modulator functioned, although with reduced performance because of spectral misalignment of the integral mirror with the exciton of the MQW. We then metalized and tested a 1-μm gate length transistor on the IC and it functioned near the specifications of the fabrication line.

© 1993 Optical Society of America