{"id":697,"date":"2009-04-15T23:13:06","date_gmt":"2009-04-16T07:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/?p=697"},"modified":"2009-04-15T23:15:14","modified_gmt":"2009-04-16T07:15:14","slug":"imec-enables-si-based-all-optical-ic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/?p=697","title":{"rendered":"IMEC enables Si-based all-optical IC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first example of all-optical signal processing for communication above 100Gbit\/s using silicon-based devices has been published in the April issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nphoton\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Nature Photonics<\/strong><\/a>. Using deep-ultraviolet lithography, standard CMOS processing and organic molecular beam deposition, researchers from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.imec.be\/imec_com\/important-breakthrough-towards-silicon-based-all-optical-integrated-circuits.php\" target=\"_blank\">University of Karlsruhe, IMEC and its associated laboratory INTEC at Ghent University, Lehigh University and ETH Zurich have now fabricated an innovative optical waveguide structure termed a silicon-organic hybrid (SOH)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_699\" style=\"width: 270px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/imec_opticalsiguide.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-699\" class=\"size-full wp-image-699\" title=\"imec_opticalsiguide\" src=\"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/imec_opticalsiguide.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"260\" height=\"151\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-699\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) optical waveguide (source: IMEC)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Today\u2019s fiber-optic communication technology can transmit information across continents, but switching still requires converting the optical signals back to electronic data for processing. All-optical signal processing would overcome a serious bottleneck in such telecommunications applications, where speed, power and cost are crucial. An optical waveguide switch in which one light signal can direct the propagation of another would be a key element to enabling all-optical processing. However, while photonic technology can be ultra fast, the photon-photon interactions in known materials and structures has been too weak to be practical.<\/p>\n<p>A 4mm long SOH waveguide proved the capability of the SOH concept (<em>see figure<\/em>). With these waveguides, all-optical demultiplexing of a 170.8Gbit\/s telecommunication signal to 42.7Gbit\/s was performed using four-wave mixing. This is the fastest silicon photonic optical signal processing demonstrated to date. In the four wave mixing process, a new wavelength is generated by combining the signal and control wavelengths. A dispersive coupling element can then separate this new wavelength and direct it to a different optical fiber. By pulsing the control wavelengths at a lower data rate than the signal, each compontent of a highly multiplexed signal can be selected. This experiment proved the viability of the SOH waveguides for all-optical processing of broadband telecommunication signals. More information on this breakthrough technology will be in the next BetaSights <a href=\"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/newsletter.php\">Newsletter<\/a>. <em>\u2013M.D.L.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first example of all-optical signal processing for communication above 100Gbit\/s using silicon-based devices has been published in the April issue of Nature Photonics. Using deep-ultraviolet lithography, standard CMOS processing and organic molecular beam deposition, researchers from the University of Karlsruhe, IMEC and its associated laboratory INTEC at Ghent University, Lehigh University and ETH Zurich [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[36,176,466,20,127],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manufacturing-fabrication-line","category-integrated-circuit","tag-cmos","tag-duv","tag-integrated-circuit","tag-materials","tag-si"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.betasights.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}