As announced in Nature Photonics, Intel has collaborated with industry, academic, and government partners to develop a silicon-based avalanche photodetector (APD). APDs are light sensors that process optical communications to electrical signals. Intel's APD has a gain-bandwidth product of 340GHz, the best result ever reported for an APD.

Learn more about Intel's APD breakthrough by reading the Nature journal article, viewing an explanatory animation, reading the APD press release, or visiting Intel's APD web site.

Intel and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) announced the demonstration of the world's first electrically driven Hybrid Silicon Laser. This device successfully integrates the light-emitting capabilities of Indium Phosphide with the light-routing and low cost advantages of silicon. The researchers believe that with this development, silicon photonic chips containing dozens or even hundreds of hybrid silicon lasers could someday be built using standard high-volume, low-cost silicon manufacturing techniques. This development addresses one of the last hurdles to producing low-cost, highly integrated silicon photonic chips for use inside and around PCs, Servers, and data centers.

In order to "siliconize" photonics, there are six main areas or building blocks for investigation. These include generating the light, selectively guiding and transporting it within the silicon, encoding light, detecting light, packaging the devices and finally, intelligently controlling all of these photonic functions. Intel is working to address these areas, and this research has produced a few recent success stories, including the first continuous-wave silicon laser and the first gigabit speed silicon modulator.

In a paper published February 17, 2005 by the prestigious scientific journal Nature, Intel researchers disclosed the development of the first continuous wave all-silicon laser using a physical property called the Raman Effect. They built the experimental device using Intel's existing standard CMOS high-volume manufacturing processes. This is the third silicon photonics paper Intel has published in Nature since 2004, beginning with the modulator breakthrough (see the Learn More section).

The breakthrough device could lead to such practical applications as optical amplifiers, lasers, wavelength converters, and new kinds of lossless optical devices. A low-cost all-silicon Raman laser could also inspire innovation in the development of new medical, sensor, and spectroscopy devices.

Download the silicon laser white paper [PDF 168KB].

Optical modulators are used to encode a high-quality data signal onto an optical beam, effectively by turning the beam on and off rapidly to create ones and zeros. Before the year 2004, no one had built an optical modulator from silicon that was faster than about 20 MHz. In February of 2004, Intel announced in the prestigious scientific journal Nature the first gigahertz silicon optical modulator. By integrating a novel transistor-like device, Intel was able to create a modulator that scaled much faster than previous attempts. In 2005, Intel researchers further demonstrated that this silicon modulator is capable of transmitting data up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps).

Download a white paper[PDF 435KB] on the original breakthrough modulator.

Over time, Intel's vision is to develop integrated, high-volume silicon photonic chips that could dramatically change the way that enterprises use photonics links for their systems and networks. Simply having photonics could eliminate bandwidth and distance limitations, allowing for radically new flexible architectures capable of processing data more efficiently. Silicon photonics may even have applications beyond digital communications, including optical debug of high-speed data, expanding wireless networks by transporting analog RF signals, and enabling lower-cost lasers for certain biomedical applications.

Explore the following links for more details on Intel research efforts in silicon photonics.

A Record-Breaking Optical Chip, by Kate Greene, MIT Technology Review, 25 Jun 2008.

Intel Shows Off Its Enviro-lovin' Side, by Stacey Higginbotham, Earth2Tech, 14 Jun 2008

Silicon optics gear up for Tbit speeds , EE Times, "Slide Deck: Inside Intel's research day", 12 Jun 2008.

Intel develops silicon-based photodetectors, addresses “dark current”, OFC/NFOEC Press Release, 25 Feb 2008.

All-Optical Clock Recovery with Retiming and Reshaping Using a Silicon Evanescent Mode-Locked Ring Laser, by B. R. Koch, A. W. Fang, H. N. Poulsen, H. Park, D. J. Blumenthal, and J. E. Bowers, R. Jones and M. J. Paniccia, and O. Cohen, Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) 2008, Paper OMN1 (Invited), Feb 2008.

A racetrack mode-locked silicon evanescent laser (PDF), by A. W. Fang, B. R. Koch, K. Gan, H. Park, R. Jones, O. Cohen, M. J. Paniccia, D. Blumenthal, J. E. Bowers, Optics Express, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 1393-1398, 17 Jan 2008.

Integrated Germanium-on-Silicon Detector Opens the Eye at 40 Gb/s, by Breck Hitz, Photonics.com, Dec 2007.

Intel’s High Speed Optical Trinity, by Ori Reshef, The Future of Things, 24 Oct 2007.

Intel Completes Photonics Trifecta, by Kate Greene, Technology Review, 10 Oct 2007.

31 GHz Ge n-i-p waveguide photodetectors on Silicon-on-Insulator substrate, by Tao Yin, Rami Cohen, Mike M. Morse, Gadi Sarid, Yoel Chetrit, Doron Rubin, and Mario J. Paniccia, Optics Express, Vol. 15, Issue 21, pp. 13965-13971, 9 Oct 2007.

Illuminating Silicon, by Kate Greene, Technology Review, Oct 2007.

A 40 GHz Mode Locked Silicon Evanescent Laser, by B. R. Koch, A. W. Fang, H.-H. Chang, H. Park, Y.-H. Kuo, R. Jones, O. Cohen, O. Raday, M. J. Paniccia, J. E. Bowers, 4th International Conference on Group IV Photonics, Tokyo Japan, wb1 (invited), 19 Sep 2007.

Silicon Photonics: Exploring Terabit Data Pipes, Intel Developer Forum session by Mike Morse, 18 Sep 2007

Intel has world’s fastest Si-Ge Photo detector, by Tim Smalley, bit-tech.net, 18 Sep 2007.

Intel Developer Forum - the show begins, by Rupert Goodwins, ZDNet, 18 Sep 2007.

40G photodetector: The other end of the link, by Sean Koehl, Research@Intel Blogs, 17 Sep 2007.

Mode-locked silicon evanescent lasers (PDF), B. R. Koch, A. W. Fang, O. Cohen, and J. E. Bowers, Optics Express, Vol. 15, No. 18, pp. 11225-11233, 21 Aug 2007.

Optical Amplification and Lasing by Stimulated Raman Scattering in Silicon Waveguides, by Mario Paniccia, A. Liu, H. Rong, R. Jones, O. Cohen and D. Hak, Journal of Lightwave Technology, Mar 2006.

Customized Drive Electronics to Extend Silicon Optical Modulators to 4 Gb/s, by D. Samara-Rubio, U. Keil, L. Liao, T. Franck, A. Liu, D. Hodge, D. Rubin, and R. Cohen, Journal of Lightwave Technologies, Dec 2005.

The Silicon Solution, by Mario Paniccia and Sean Koehl, IEEE Spectrum, Oct 2005

Silicon Photonics Could Revolutionize Future Servers and Networks, by Sean Koehl, Converge! Network Digest, 26 Sep 2005.

Intel's Breakthrough: Its new silicon laser could add decades to Moore's Law., by Robert Service, Technology Review, Jul 2005.

High speed silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator, by Ling Liao, Dean Samara-Rubio, Michael Morse, Ansheng Liu, Dexter Hodge, Doron Rubin, Ulrich Keil, and Thorkild Franck, Optics Express, 18 Apr 2005.

Scaling the Modulation Bandwidth and Phase Efficiency of a Silicon Optical Modulator, by A. Liu, D. Samara-Rubio, L. Liao, and M. Paniccia, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Apr 2005.

A Continuous-Wave Raman Silicon Laser, by Haisheng Rong, Richard Jones, Ansheng Liu, Oded Cohen, Dani Hak, Alexander Fang, and Mario Paniccia, Nature, 17 Feb 2005.

Silicon Shines On, by Jerome Faist, Nature, 17 Feb 2005.

An all-silicon Raman laser, by Haisheng Rong, Ansheng Liu, Richard Jones, Oded Cohen, Dani Hak, Remus Nicolaescu, Alexnader Fang, and Mario Paniccia, Nature, 20 Jan 2005.

All-silicon laser makes its debut, PhysicsWorld, 5 Jan 2005.

Optical Technologies and Applications, Intel Technology Journal, 10 May 2004.

The Optical Age of Silicon by Graham T. Reed, Nature, 12 Feb 2004.

A high-speed silicon optical modulator based on a metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor by Ansheng Liu, Richard Jones, Ling Liao, Dean Samara-Rubio, Doron Rubin, Oded Cohen, Remus Nicolaescu, and Mario Paniccia, Nature, 12 Feb 2004.

Introducing Intel's Advances in Silicon Photonics, by Mario Paniccia, Victor Krutul, and Sean Koehl, Feb 2004.

Intel Unveils Silicon Photonics Breakthrough: High-Speed Silicon Modulation, Feb 2004.

White Papers

Additional Resources

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