Monolithic integrated silicon photonic interconnect with perfectly vertical coupling optical interface

Abstract

We proposed and demonstrated a point-to-point photonic interconnect based on a perfectly vertical grating coupler. This bidirectional grating plays double roles of coupling and splitting at the optical input. Based on such a configuration, an electro-optical (E-O) modulator and photonic interconnect were demonstrated. To characterize the photonic interconnect, both the E-O modulator and germanium waveguide photodetector were measured. Finally, an eye diagram test was carried out to study the dynamic performance of the photonic link. The results show that the maximum operation speed is 4 Gb/s.© 2013 IEEE.