Abstract

The increasing need for more efficient communication networks has been the main driving force for the development of complex photonic integration circuits combining active and passive building blocks towards advanced functionality. However, this perpetual effort comes with the cost of additive power losses and the research community has resorted to the investigation of different materials to establish efficient on-chip amplification. Among the different proposals, erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers appear to be a promising solution for high performance transmission in the C-band band with low fabrication cost, due to their CMOS compatibility and integration potential with the silicon\silicon nitride photonic platforms. In this paper we provide a holistic study for high-speed WDM transmission capabilities of a monolithically integrated Al₂O₃:Er³⁺ spiral waveguide amplifier co-integrated with Si₃N₄ components, providing a static characterization and a dynamic evaluation for (a) 4 × 40 Gbps, (b) 8 × 40 Gbps and (c) 8×60 Gbps WDM transmissions achieving clearly open eye diagram in all cases. The active region of the erbium doped waveguide amplifier consists of a 5.9 cm Al₂O₃:Er³⁺ spiral adiabatically coupled to passive Si₃N₄ waveguides combined with on chip 980 nm/1550 nm WDM Multiplexers/Demultiplexers. Experimental results reveal bit-error rate values below the KR4-FEC limit of 2×10^-5 for all channels, without any DSP applied on the transmitter or receiver side for a 4×40 Gbps and 8×40 Gbps data stream transmission.

High on-chip gain spiral Al₂O₃:Er³⁺ waveguide amplifiers

D. B. Bonneville, C. E. Osornio-Martinez, M. Dijkstra, and S. M. García-Blanco
Opt. Express 32(9) 15527-15536 (2024)

Gain bandwidth of 80 nm and 2 dB/cm peak gain in Al₂O₃:Er³⁺ optical amplifiers on silicon

J. D. B. Bradley, L. Agazzi, D. Geskus, F. Ay, K. Wörhoff, and M. Pollnau
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High-gain waveguide amplifiers in Si₃N₄ technology via double-layer monolithic integration

Jinfeng Mu, Meindert Dijkstra, Jeroen Korterik, Herman Offerhaus, and Sonia M. García-Blanco
Photon. Res. 8(10) 1634-1641 (2020)

Absorption and emission cross sections of Er³⁺ in Al₂O₃ waveguides

Gerlas N. van den Hoven, Jan A. van der Elsken, Albert Polman, Cor van Dam, Koos W. M. van Uffelen, and Meint K. Smit
Appl. Opt. 36(15) 3338-3341 (1997)

Gain optimization of an erbium-ytterbium co-doped amplifier via a Si₃N₄ photonic platform

Ziming Dong, Yuqing Zhao, Yitong Wang, Wei Wei, Lei Ding, Liqin Tang, and Yigang Li
Opt. Express 31(21) 35419-35430 (2023)