Silicon photonics for 100 Gbit/s intra-data center optical interconnects

We report on an ultra-compact co-integrated transmitter and receiver in SiGe BiCMOS technology for short reach optical interconnects. A fully integrated EPIC transceiver chip on silicon photonics technology is described. The chip integrates all photonic and electronic devices for an electro-optic transceiver and has been designed to be testable on wafer-scale. A node-matched diode modulator based on carrier injection is a key building block in the chip design. Its operation performance is presented with respect to insertion loss, signal-to-noise-ratio and power consumption at a 25.78125 Gbit/s in NRZ operation. A novel SiGe based photodetector exhibits a -3 dB bandwidth of up to 70 GHz and a responsivity of >1 A/W. Details are given about the process technology of co-integration of photonic and electronic integrated circuits using both silicon-on-insulator and bulk silicon. The implemented co-integration process requires only few additional process steps, leading to only a slight increase in complexity compared to conventional CMOS and BiCMOS baselines.