GOALI: Hybrid Silicon-Transparent Conductive Oxide Devices for Large-Scale On-chip Wavelength Division Multiplexing Optical Interconnects

GOALI：用于大规模片上波分复用光学互连的混合硅-透明导电氧化物器件

• 批准号: 1927271
• 负责人: Alan Wang
• 金额: $ 40.59万
• 依托单位: Oregon State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-15 至 2022-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1927271&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: GOALI; Hybrid; Silicon; Transparent; Conductive

Large-scale parallel optical interconnects hold the key to resolving the grand challenge of enormous bandwidth requirement between on-chip cores and within multi-chip modules. Silicon photonics, which is the mostly available integrated photonic platform, must excel in energy efficiency and bandwidth density in order to meet the stringent requirement of future extreme-scale photonic interconnects. The goal of this GOALI proposal is to develop hybrid silicon-transparent conductive oxide (Si-TCO) devices, especially microring resonators including microdisks, with unprecedented electro-optic (E-O) tunability and energy efficiency for large-scale on-chip wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical interconnects. The proposed research is highly interdisciplinary and will impact academia, industry, and photonics community by proving a unique path to integrate highly efficient TCO materials with silicon photonics. If successful, this GOALI project will lay a solid foundation toward developing a new type of silicon photonic devices for future extreme-scale on-chip WDM optical communication. The education and outreach activities will benefit graduate, undergraduate and K-12 students, and broaden the participation of under-represented minorities and women students at OSU. This research will also promote industrial collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and AIM Photonics, and broaden the research experiences of students in science and engineering at Oregon State University (OSU).Technical: TCO materials have attracted escalating research interests in integrated photonic devices, metamaterials and metasurfaces in recent years due to the extraordinary refractive index tuning achieved either through oxygen vacancy doping or electrical gating. In addition, TCO materials can be deposited with high quality using DC- or RF-sputtering on various platforms, which also possess long-term stability. Therefore, TCO materials are fully compatible with silicon photonics and has the potential to be readily integrated with existing silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs). This GOALI project will focus on the development of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor-driven active silicon-TCO photonic devices as well as exploring the feasibility of scalable integration with existing silicon photonic platforms. The main objectives of this research include: 1) demonstrating hybrid Si-TCO micro-ring filters with extremely large E-O tuning efficiency to compensate fabrication errors and temperature variation without any thermal heater; 2) implementing an athermal on-chip 4-channel WDM transmitter module using dual-functional microring resonators, which can simultaneously function as wavelength tunable filters and high speed E-O modulators; and 3) verifying process compatibility and hybrid integration with silicon photonics for future scalable manufacturing using AIM Photonics foundry service. We expect that the electrically tunable silicon microring resonators with near-zero wavelength tuning power will replace the power-hungry thermal heaters that have been used for decades. Most importantly, we will prove that such scalable MOS-driven photonic devices can be fabricated by combining AIM Photonics passive silicon-on-insulator multi-project wafer (SOI-MPW) runs and in-house TCO processes at OSU.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

大规模并行光互连是解决片上核心之间和多芯片模块内部巨大带宽需求的关键。硅光子学是最有效的集成光子平台，必须在能量效率和带宽密度方面出类拔萃，以满足未来极端规模光子互连的严格要求。该GOALI提案的目标是开发混合硅透明导电氧化物（Si-TCO）器件，特别是包括微盘在内的微谐振器，具有前所未有的电光（E-O）可调谐性和能量效率，用于大规模片上波分复用（WDM）光学互连。拟议的研究是高度跨学科的，将通过提供一种将高效TCO材料与硅光子集成的独特途径来影响学术界、工业界和光子学界。如果成功，GOALI项目将为未来超大规模片上WDM光通信开发新型硅光子器件奠定坚实的基础。教育和外联活动将使研究生、本科生和K-12学生受益，并扩大代表性不足的少数民族和女学生在俄勒冈州立大学的参与。这项研究还将促进与惠普企业和AIM Photonics的工业合作，并拓宽俄勒冈州州立大学（OSU）科学和工程专业学生的研究经验。TCO材料在集成光子器件中吸引了越来越多的研究兴趣，近年来，由于通过氧空位掺杂或电掺杂实现的异常折射率调谐，门控此外，TCO材料可以使用DC或RF溅射在各种平台上以高质量沉积，这些平台也具有长期稳定性。 因此，TCO材料与硅光子完全兼容，并且具有容易与现有硅光子集成电路（PIC）集成的潜力。该GOALI项目将专注于开发金属氧化物半导体（MOS）电容驱动的有源硅TCO光子器件，并探索与现有硅光子平台可扩展集成的可行性。本研究的主要目标包括：1）展示具有极大电光调谐效率的混合硅-TCO微环滤波器，无需任何热加热器即可补偿制造误差和温度变化; 2）使用双功能微环谐振器实现无热片上4通道WDM发射机模块，可同时用作波长可调谐滤波器和高速电光调制器;以及3）验证工艺兼容性以及与硅光子学的混合集成，以用于使用AIM光子学代工服务的未来可扩展制造。 我们期望具有近零波长调谐功率的电调谐硅微谐振器将取代已经使用了几十年的高功耗热加热器。最重要的是，我们将证明这种可扩展的MOS驱动的光子器件可以通过结合AIM Photonics无源绝缘体上硅多项目晶圆（SOI-MPW）运行和内部TCO工艺在OSU制造。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。