At last week’s Integrated Photonics Research, Silicon and Nanophotonics Conference (IPR, San Diego, July 13th – 16th, 2014), imec has demonstrated improved performance of various key building blocks for high-density low-power wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical interconnects in silicon. The achievements are an important milestone for imec’s fully integrated silicon photonics platform (iSiPP25G) for high-performance optical transceivers, extending the performance towards 28Gb/s and beyond.
Imec has demonstrated, at wafer-scale, a ring-based Wavelength-Division Multiplexing filter with an improved thermo-optic tuning efficiency better than 1nm/mW per channel, a thermally tunable 28Gb/s ring modulator with an efficiency of 260pm/mW and a high-speed germanium photodetector achieving an average responsitivity of 0.85A/W, and opto-electrical bandwidth of 50GHz with dark currents at –1.0V below 50nA. The devices are all integrated on imec’s iSiPP25G platform and extend imec’s Si photonics portfolio, also including low-loss
(<2.5dB/cm) strip waveguides, highly efficient grating couplers (2.5dB insertion loss), 25Gb/s Mach-Zehnder modulators and more. “Imec’s Silicon Photonics platform provides 28Gb/s performance for integrated photonics circuits for telecom and datacom industries. Companies can benefit from our silicon photonics capability through established standard cells, or explore the functionality of their own designs in Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) runs,” stated Philippe Absil, program director at imec. “Through our MPW offer, fabless R&D teams can access a cost-efficient silicon photonics solution, with state-of-the-art performance, design flexibility and superior CD and thickness control”.
Imec offers the platform for silicon photonics via ePIXfab (supported by Ghent University), Europractice IC service and MOSIS, a provider of low-cost prototyping and small volume production services for custom ICs.The next passive run is now open for registration (deadline September 15th) with first wafers out in January 2015. Imec’s third active ISIPP25G run is now open for registration (deadline November 10th) with first wafers out in June 2015. Support, registration and design kit access will be organised by imec’s services via its Europractice IC service, in collaboration with world-wide MPW partners.
