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Intel announces the first 40Gbps Silicon Laser Modulator

As presented in their press release, Intel has shown the first 40Gbps silicon laser modulator, as a component for a Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) mainly focused to future optical interconnects.

This is a great leap forward, reaching the same capabilities as current standard optical modulators. Achiving a similar performance to normal photonic materials in silicon is very challenging, because crystalline silicon does not exhibit the linear electro-optic effect used to modulate light in standard photonic materials. Engineers are forced to rely on the free-carrier plasma dispersion effect, in which silicon’s refractive index is changed when the density of free carriers is varied, to modulate light in silicon. This new high speed modulator is based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a reverse-biased pn junction in each of the arms, and by by modulating the phase difference between the interferometer’s two arms, they can modulate the intensity of the light transmitted through the interferometer.

posted by Goto @ 11:21