IHP presents Joint Lab re­search re­sults on silicon-​organic hy­brid electro-​optical (EO) mod­u­la­tor for RF pho­tonic ICs at IEDM in San Fran­cisco

Re­searchers of the Joint Lab be­tween IHP – In­no­va­tions for High Per­for­mance Mi­cro­elec­tron­ics and TH Wildau will re­port on a hy­brid silicon-​organic electro-​optical (EO) mod­u­la­tor at the IEEE In­ter­na­tional Elec­tron De­vices Meet­ing (IEDM) from 3^rd – 5^th De­cem­ber, 2018 in San Fran­cisco. This novel de­vice takes ad­van­tage of the qua­dratic EO ef­fect, open­ing a path to ultra-​low-power pho­tonic build­ing blocks such as tun­able fil­ters, switches and RF mod­u­la­tors. Ex­ist­ing silicon-​organic hy­brid EO mod­u­la­tors em­ploy the lin­ear EO ef­fect in poly­mers, which ini­tially re­quires to apply a high volt­age in order to ac­ti­vate the or­ganic ma­te­r­ial. This is, how­ever, as­so­ci­ated with longterm and tem­per­a­ture sta­bil­ity is­sues. The re­searchers from IHP and TH Wildau in­ves­ti­gated an EO poly­mer that em­ploys the qua­dratic EO ef­fect in­stead of the lin­ear ef­fect. While it avoids high-​voltage pol­ing, the pho­tonic de­vice it­self is de­signed for an ultra-​low per-​bit en­ergy con­sump­tion of 87 aJ/bit. Small sig­nal fre­quency ex­per­i­ments show the abil­ity of RF mod­u­la­tion and a voltage-​length prod­uct of 1 Vcm was de­duced from DC ex­per­i­ments, which would lead to low-​power EO switches and­mod­u­la­tors that op­er­ate at CMOS-​compatible dri­ver volt­ages.

The Joint Lab IHP / TH Wildau with its more than 10 years his­tory con­cen­trates on the co­op­er­a­tion for teach­ing and re­search. The joint ed­u­ca­tion of young sci­en­tists is the focus of this suc­cess­ful co­op­er­a­tion. The Joint Lab for­mat bridges be­tween re­search and uni­ver­si­ties. Within the Leibniz-​Association, IHP was one of the first in­sti­tu­tions with this form of co­op­er­a­tion and is still one of the most ac­tive. IHP has eight Joint Labs: In Pots­dam, Cot­tbus, Wildau and Berlin as well as on an in­ter­na­tional level in Poznań and Is­tan­bul, sci­en­tists of the in­sti­tute are work­ing closely to­gether with the stu­dents. Top­ics of these co­op­er­a­tions are strate­gi­cally aligned. There is an in­ten­sive and suc­cess­ful team work within nu­mer­ous re­search projects, which can also be seen in the num­ber of joint pub­li­ca­tions. IHP is very ac­tive within the teach­ing as well as the su­per­vi­sion and as­sess­ment of qual­i­fi­ca­tion the­ses of the part­ner uni­ver­si­ties.

https://www.ihp-​microelectronics.com/en/joint-​labs/technicaluniversity-​of-applied-sciences-wildau/overview.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKwG­WYyEkmQ
http://btb­mar­ket­ing.com/iedm/docs/Paper%2023.3,%20Si-​Organic%20Electro-​Optical%20Mod­u­la­tor%20For%20Low-​Power%20Pho­tonic%20ICs,%20IHP%20et%20al.docx

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