A completely new plasmonic chip for ultrafast data transmission using light

Techxplore.com  July 3, 2020 To address the challenge of increasing data rates an international team of researchers (Switzerland, Germany, USA- University of Washington, Israel, Greece) has developed a monolithically integrated electro-optical transmitter that can achieve symbol rates beyond 100 GBd. They combined advanced bipolar CMOS with silicon plasmonics, and addressed key challenges in monolithic integration through co-design of the electronic and plasmonic layers, including thermal design, packaging, and a nonlinear organic electro-optic material. They demonstrated their technique by developing two modulator concepts—an ultra-compact plasmonic modulator and a silicon-plasmonic modulator with photonic routing—both directly processed onto the bipolar CMOS electronics. The findings […]