IRT Nanoelec in Grenoble has integrated a III-V/silicon laser and silicon Mach Zehnder modulator to transmit at 25Gbit/s down a single 10km optical fibre, claiming this to be a first.

“This transmission rate usually is achieved using an external source, over a 10km single-mode fibre,” said the R&D organisation, which is predicting increased bandwidth and reliability as well as power reductions from photonics-on-silicon.

“Jointly obtained by STMicroelectronics and Leti in the frame of the IRT Nanoelec co-operation, these results, especially fabricating the laser directly on silicon, demonstrate IRT Nanoelec’s leadership in III/V-on-silicon integration to achieve high-data-rate fibreoptic modules,” said project manager Stéphane Bernabé.

Other partners are Samtec and Mentor Graphics.

Silicon photonics circuits were processed first on a 200mm SOI wafer – with 300mm wafers planned, then, a 50mm wafer of III-V material was directly bonded on the silicon wafer.

In the third step, the hybrid wafer was processed using conventional semiconductor and MEMS steps to produce an integrated modulator-and-laser transmitter.

Leti will attend the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC 2016) in Anaheim next week.

By: DocMemory
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