A team of researchers from the ORC (Optoelectronics Research Centre) at the University of Southampton, UK, has developed and demonstrated a first-of-its-kind optical transmitter made entirely of silicon that delivers 100 gigabits per second without using any digital signal processing technology. The maximum data rate provided by the new optical modulator is twice that of other existing similar devices, and eliminating the need for additional signal processing will not only make it possible to create new high-performance communication channels, but also micro-scale data transmission networks, the scope of which does not extend beyond the crystal of a single chip.
Optical modulators are key components of any optical communication technology and are used not only in traditional optical data transmission networks, but also in a number of other technologies, such as microwave photonics and others. Moreover, the appearance of an all-silicon device will make a number of new technologies and solutions cheaper and much faster to market, because they will no longer use materials that have little compatibility with existing semiconductor manufacturing technologies.
“Unlike our previous work in this area, we have implemented a fundamentally new design and structure of the device, in which the elements of photonics and electronics are combined into one integrated system,” says Dr. Ke Li (Dr. Ke Li), in whose name most of the patents associated with the new technology are registered, “And this allowed us to get more information transfer speed, get more efficiency by avoiding additional digital signal processing.”
Note that the previous record for transmission speed by a single silicon device was a value of 56 gigabits per second. Of course, the group from the ORC center is not the only one working in this direction, but the success of other research groups have so far been limited to the rate increase of 5-10 percent, which is not impressive compared with the nearly 100 percent increase obtained by scientists from Southampton University.
Lastly, the silicon optical modulator itself was manufactured at the University of Southampton’s CORNERSTONE pilot production facility. Additional systems and drivers for this modulator were manufactured at the TSMC factory in Taiwan, and the final stage of integration and assembly was performed in a special clean room at the University of Southampton.