Monolithically integrated 112 Gbps PAM4 optical transmitter and receiver in a 45nm CMOS-silicon photonics process

• DOI: 10.1364/opticaopen.22814837
• Publication Date: 2023-05-25T10:17:57Z
• Authors: Thomas Baehr-Jones; Shahab Ardalan; Matthew Chang; Saman Jafarlou; Xavier Serey; George Zarris; Gabriel Thompson; Artsroun Darbinian; Brian West; Babak Behnia; Vesselin Velev; Yun Zhe Li; Katherine Roelofs; Wuchun Wu; Jim Mali; Jiahao Zhan; Noam Ophir; Chris Horng; Romanas Narevich; Fen Guan; Jinghui Yang; Hao Wu; Patrick Maupin; Rhys Manley; Yogi Ahuja; Ari Novack; Lei Wang; Matthew Streshinsky
• Keywords: BiCMOS; Electro-optic modulator

We demonstrate a transmitter and receiver in silicon photonics platform for O-band optical communication that monolithically incorporates modulator driver, traveling-wave Mach-Zehnder modulator, control circuitry, photodetector, TIA the GlobalFoundries Fotonix™ (45SPCLO) platform. The show an open 112 Gbps PAM4 eye at 4.3 pJ/bit energy efficiency, not including laser. Extensive use of gain-peaking enables our driver to achieve high bandwidths needed 45 nm CMOS-silicon process. Our results suggest alternative frequent approach bump-bonding BiCMOS drivers TIAs photonics.