Optical Interconnects

About

Invention Traditional electrical interconnects in electronic device limited the bandwidth by RC delay in metal wires. The charging/discharging capacitance in metal wires also introduces power dissipation. Optical interconnects achieve high bandwidth capacity as no RC delay limitation and no need to charge the optical waveguides. Silicon photonic devices using optical microresonators as a building block to manipulate light at sharp resonances form a basis for next-generation compact-size, low-power and high-speed photonic integrated circuits. The invention discloses an integrated optical device on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates and the associated electronic closed-loop control scheme for enabling on-chip in-microresonator real-time linear-absorption-based photocurrent-monitoring and tuning of the spectral alignment between the silicon microresonator resonance and a signal wavelength. Marketing Opportunity This invention is of practical use in next-generation wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical communications, and optical interconnections for computers and data centers, where silicon microresonators are finding promising applications in reconfigurable wavelength-selective photonic components including channel add-drop filters, optical delay lines, electro-optic modulators, optical switches and wavelength routers, etc. Key Benefits This invention offers Real-time on-chip in-microresonator linear-absorption photocurrent monitoring Feedback-controlled two-stage resonance wavelength tuning Potentially practical silicon microresonator-based photonic devices that are more tolerant to environmental changes and signal wavelength drifts