A platform for high speed nano-photonics enabled by 2DEG in AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures
Abstract
Fueled by the increasing bandwidth requirement on communication infrastructure, network interconnects for both conventional data networks and intra-/interchip data links continue to scale in complexity and bandwidth year after year. This has led to significant interest and subsequent emergence of the optical interconnect, and for the last decade, silicon photonics has been pursued as the leading candidate in this space due to its unique combination of low fabrication costs, performance enhancements resulting from electronic–photonic integration, and compatibility with CMOS fabrication processes. Optical modulation is one of the main required functionalities for anyoptical interconnect solution, and perhaps the most important active component in the system. The speed of operation is limited by the carrier recombination lifetime in silicon, and operation beyond few tens of Gbps is fundamentally not possible with this architecture. The speed of operation is limited to similar frequency range in lithium niobate photonic devices, although the Pockels effect mediated modulation in such platforms can perform up to 200Gbps with extremely poor bit error rates, that are not suitable for practical applications. The objective of this proposal is to investigate the feasibility of utilizing the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) formed at the interface of aAlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures to perform plasma dispersion assisted modulation of CW laser light, in a chip-scale platform. The plasma dispersion effect due to the 2DEG will be leveraged to demonstrate a high speed modulator, benefitting from the high mobility of the charge carriers. The richness of material properties, such as nonlinear optical properties, piezoelectricity, robust operation in harsh environments etc. in such III-V heterostructures opens up the possibility of coupling several of these physics in an integrated chip-scale nanophotonic device.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 16, 2022
- Source ID
- FA23862110058
Entities
People
- Siddharth Tallur
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
- United States Air Force