Silicon Photonic Switches Hybrid-Integrated With CMOS Drivers

• Published in: IEEE journal of solid-state circuits Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 345 - 354
• Main Authors: Rylyakov, A. V., Schow, C. L., Lee, B. G., Green, W. M. J., Assefa, S., Doany, F. E., Yang, M., Van Campenhout, J., Jahnes, C. V., Kash, J. A., Vlasov, Y. A.
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01-01-2012; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Circuit properties; CMOS driver; CMOS integrated circuits; Crosstalk; Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing; Electric, optical and optoelectronic circuits; Electronic circuits; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; hybrid integration; Integrated circuits; Integrated optics. Optical fibers and wave guides; Mach-Zehnder interferometer; Optical and optoelectronic circuits; Optical crosstalk; Optical switches; Oscillators, resonators, synthetizers; Photonics; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Silicon; silicon photonics; Performance evaluation; Integrated optics; optical switches; Hybrid integrated circuit; Bit error rate; Crosstalk; Mach Zehnder interferometer; Mach―Zehnder interferometer; Driver; Wavelength division multiplexing; CMOS driver; hybrid integration; Ring resonator; Energy dissipation; Complementary MOS technology; Silicon; Optical switch; silicon photonics
• ISSN: 0018-9200; 1558-173X
• DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2011.2170638

This paper describes the design and measured performance of three different silicon photonic switches: a 2×2 switch, a 1×2 switch, and a 4×4 switch. All of the devices have been hybrid integrated with a corresponding custom 90-nm CMOS driver. The 2×2 switch is based on a wavelength-insensitive Mach-Zehnder interferometer (WIMZ) and the 1×2 is based on a two-ring resonator. The power dissipation of the 2×2 WIMZ switch was 2 mW from a 1.0-V supply, with measured transition time of 3.9 ns. The 4×4 switch, composed of six 2×2 Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) switches was demonstrated to route 3×40 Gb/s WDM data with BER <; 10 -12 , with less than -10-dB crosstalk and 7-dB loss.