Engineering science - Radiation-matter interactions

Conception, fabrication and characterization of low electrical power consumption optical modulator for silicon optical interconnects

Electrical interconnects become a real issue for the increase of the integration density of microelectronic integrated circuits. The most promising solution today is to introduce optical links between two chips or inside a chip to ensure high speed transmission. An optical interconnect (or optical link) comprises a light emitter, an optical modulator to encode the information and a photodetector. CEA-Leti and IEF are among the best research groups worldwide in the field of guiding, modulation and photodetection of light on silicon chips which are technology fully compatible with microelectronic chips. Optical modulators are one of the key components of optical links. They have to meet simultaneously a high modulation efficiency, small insertion losses, high data rate of 40 Gb/s and low electrical consumption. The objective of this PhD is to develop a new generation of capacitive optical modulators on silicon meeting all these performance criteria and in particular with a low electrical consumption, which is a major challenge for applications. This PhD work will be done at CEA-Leti with a PhD supervisor at IEF, a research laboratory with which we collaborate since several years. In a first step, the candidate will work on the electro-optical and photonic design of this new generation of modulator, as well as on the RF design of the driving electrodes. He will also follow the fabrication of a demonstrator in the clean room. Finally, he will characterize the devices on our automated 200 mm probers and assess the modulation performances. He will benefit from the strong complementarity between CEA-Leti and IEF in the field of silicon photonics to carry out his research work aiming at the convergence between photonics and microelectroncics.

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Département : Département d'Optronique (LETI) Laboratory : Laboratoire des Coposants Photonique sur CMOS (LCPC) Start Date : 01-10-2013 ECA Code : SL-DRT-13-0397 Contact : segolene.olivier@cea.fr