100-Gb/s single-channel optical data communication transceivers can provide a compact and cost-effective solution for the exponentially growing data-center traffic. One of the enabling technologies is electro-absorption-modulated single-mode lasers which are… Click to show full abstract
100-Gb/s single-channel optical data communication transceivers can provide a compact and cost-effective solution for the exponentially growing data-center traffic. One of the enabling technologies is electro-absorption-modulated single-mode lasers which are very compact, efficient, and fast. In this letter, such a transmitter integrated on a silicon photonics platform is demonstrated. While low loss and high contrast waveguides are provided by Si photonics, the gain and efficient electro-absorption are provided by the InP-based multi-quantum-well structure. A lumped electro-absorption modulator integrated with a distributed feedback laser is designed and fabricated in this platform. The epitaxial stack is identical for the laser and the modulator, which eases the fabrication process considerably. In this way, we successfully demonstrate 100-Gb/s single-channel electrical duobinary optical data transport over ~100 m of fiber with a bit error rate of 1.6e-3.
               
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