Abstract

We report on the computed and experimental studies of an ultrafast, all-silicon optical receiving and modulating system that is compatible in processing with the integrated-circuit technology. A silicon metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodiode is demonstrated to be an optical receiver with resolvable bit rate as high as 60 Gb/s. An all-silicon light-intensity modulator is proposed as an optical transmitter. The field-effect nature of this proposed modulator provides high-speed performance in addition to low-power dissipation. A sample device with 300-µm interaction length is calculated to have a modulation depth of ~40% with 5-V bias, and the operational speed is expected to be 70 GHz, limited by the RC time constant.

© 1995 Optical Society of America