Silicon photonics fiber-tothe-home transceiver array based on transfer-printing-based integration of III-V photodetectors

A 4-channel silicon photonics transceiver array for Point-to-Point (P2P) fiber-tothe-home (FTTH) optical networks at the central office (CO) side is demonstrated. A III-V Oband photodetector array was integrated onto the silicon photonic transmitter through transfer printing technology, showing a polarization-independent responsivity of 0.39 0.49 A/W in the O-band. The integrated PDs (30 × 40 μm mesa) have a 3 dB bandwidth of 11.5 GHz at −3 V bias. Together with high-speed C-band silicon ring modulators whose bandwidth is up to 15 GHz, operation of the transceiver array at 10 Gbit/s is demonstrated. The use of transfer printing for the integration of the III-V photodetectors allows for an efficient use of III-V material and enables the scalable integration of III-V devices on silicon photonics wafers, thereby reducing their cost. © 2017 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (040.5160) Photodetectors; (250.5300) Photonic integrated circuits. References and links 1. A. Hatt, O. 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Introduction
Ethernet point-to-point (P2P) access networks, with advantages such as a simple architecture, no need of expensive wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) components and the ease to upgrade, are mostly deployed in Europe [1].In such access networks, each optical network unit located in the home of the subscriber is directly connected to a dedicated transceiver in the central office (CO), therefore requiring a large number of CO transceivers.In order to keep size and power consumption of such a CO manageable, the realization of integrated, low cost and low power consumption transceiver arrays is of paramount importance.Among several mainstream photonic integration platforms including silica-on-silicon (SOS) [2], InP [3] and silicon-on-insulator (SOI) [4], SOI has the obvious advantages of CMOS compatibility and high refractive index contrast, which allows high-volume production of compact photonic circuits with strong light-matter interaction, resulting in low cost, low power consumption and high bandwidth devices.The imec silicon photonics platform [5], amongst other platforms, enables the integration of high-speed devices such as Ge photodetectors (PDs), ring modulators, Mach-Zehnder modulators.Together with mature passive building blocks such a platform is well-suited for the integration of high-speed optical transceivers and transceiver arrays.For the CO transceiver array an O band receiver is required.Although Ge PDs are a good candidate for this function, the issue of realizing a polarization-independent data signal reception and the duplexing with the C band downstream signal results in a complex integrated circuit.Instead of Germanium, III-V semiconductor material can be used for the same purpose.As shown in Figure 1, by integrating a surface illuminated O band photodetector on top of the fiber-to-chip grating coupler, the O band upstream signal can be received in a polarization independent way.By choosing the cut-off wavelength of the photodetector between the O band and C band, the C band downstream signal can be coupled to fiber through the photodetector structure, without being absorbed, providing a straightforward path to optical duplexing.In order to cost-effectively integrate the III-V photodetectors on the silicon photonic wafers, wafer-scale processes are required.In conventional bonding technologies relying on die-to-wafer and wafer-to-wafer bonding [6][7][8] the efficiency of III-V material use is poor as only a very small fraction of the eventual chip surface requires III-V device structures.Transfer printing, as a novel technique, was first proposed in 2004 [9].By utilizing this technique, micron-scale thin films such as III-V material coupons and devices [10][11][12][13] can be transferred from a source substrate to a target substrate with high alignment accuracy (+/-1.5 μm 3σ).More information on the transfer printing process of III-V coupons can be found in [10].Since the material coupons/devices can be wafer-scale pre-defined in a dense array on the III-V source wafer and picked-up and printed in a massively parallel way, the efficiency of the usage of source material is significantly improved and the cost of the integration is greatly reduced.In the case of transfer printing of pre-processed opto-electronic components, the integration post-processing just consists of a passivation and collective wiring of the devices.
Moreover, the technique paves the way to integrate devices from different source wafers.
In this paper we present the realization of a 4-channel silicon photonic transceiver array for P2P FTTH optical networks, operating at 10 Gbit/s per channel.An array of III-V O band photodetectors (PDs) was integrated with the silicon photonics circuit.We previously demonstrated the use of such PDs for a single channel transceiver where the integration was realized through bonding technology [14].In this work, the PDs were integrated on top of the grating couplers of 4 channels through the transfer printing approach.This work showcases the great potential that transfer printing has for the integration of III-V opto-electronic components on a silicon photonic integrated circuit wafer.

Transceiver configuration
The schematic layout the proposed 4-channel transceiver array is depicted in Figure 1(a).The silicon photonic integrated circuit is realized in imec's iSIPP25G platform.A 1550 nm CW laser is coupled to the silicon photonic transceiver, where it is split to 4 channels through cascaded 1×2 MMIs.Each of the channels has a silicon ring modulator, which serves as a downstream transmitter, to imprint the downstream data on the carrier (1550 nm).The signal is then coupled to fiber through the grating coupler and the integrated O band PD, as shown in Figure 1(b).By selecting the cut-off wavelength of the III-V absorbing material to be 1.37 μm, the PDs are 'transparent' (4 orders of magnitude smaller responsivity) for the C band signal, enabling the duplexing of the C band and O band signal that are sent and received through the same fiber.Thanks to the vertical coupling scheme, the PDs have a polarization-independent responsivity of 0.39-0.49A/W in the O band.

Transfer printing pre-fabricated PDs on Si PIC
The key process discussed in this work is the transfer printing of the III-V photodetectors on the silicon photonic integrated circuit.As shows in Table .1, the III-V O band PD layer stack consists of a 1 μm intrinsic InGaAsP absorbing layer with a cut-off wavelength of 1.37 μm.Besides the classical p-i-n layer structure, a 1 μm InGaAs layer is used for releasing the prefabricated PDs.Instead of highly doped InP hereby a 60 nm thick intrinsic InP is used as the etch stop layer [11,15].The transfer-printing-based integration process flow is described in Figure 2. Figure 2(a) shows the full layer stack of the source wafer.Firstly the top sacrificial layer was removed by a short etch in HCl.In order to simplify the post-process after transfer printing, a U-shaped Ti/Au contact was defined, leaving a 17 μm wide absorption window for the reception of the upstream and the transmission of the downstream signal from and to the same fiber, respectively.The 30×40 μm 2 PD mesa is defined using ICP using a 200 nm thick SiNx hard mask.After reaching the n-contact layer, a second mesa was defined by patterning the n-InP layer and a Ni/Ge/Au contact surrounding the PD mesa is defined.With a second SiNx hard mask the InGaAs release layer was etched through slightly into the InP substrate, as shown in Figure 2(f).Then the PD structures were encapsulated by a photoresist layer (~2.5 μm thick) with narrow t is ready for re etching of InG resulting in a quality when layer was spi bake.Now th printing integ up and transfe ed to the substr ueous FeCl 3 so pect to intrinsi surface after th o the SOI wav he planarized S II-V wafer and process, a PDM ng an X-Celepr The opera PDMS stamp thereby break done by slow Thanks to th automatically accuracy of -/ by oxygen pla a DVS-BCB the BCB laye process is com (Figure 2(l)).and a single P in Figure 3(a shown in Figu   Of key importance for the operation of the transceiver is the transparency of the photodetector for the downstream C band signal.This was verified under CW conditions, as shown in Figure 5.As a bias of -3 V was applied during the dynamic measurements, all the static characterizations were done at the same -3 V bias.The responsivity for the O band signal is 0.39-0.49A/W (Figure 5(a)) and it is quite constant over the range from 1270 nm to 1350 nm wavelength (Figure 5(b)), while that for the C band signal is 0.025-0.03mA/W, which is more than four orders of magnitude smaller (Figure 5(c)).The dark current of the integrated O band PDs varies from 0.6 to 1.1 μA.This however is not expected to impact the system performance when integrated with a transimpedance amplifier array [16].

Dynamic characterization
In order to verify the high-speed performance of the transceiver array, small signal characterization using a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) was at first carried out.As a standard building block in the imec's iSIPP25G platform, the ring modulators have a bandwidth of 15 GHz at -1 V bias, as shown in Figure 6(a).On the other hand for the transfer printed O band PDs the 3 dB bandwidth is measured to be 11.5 GHz in Figure 6(b), with good uniformity over the 4 devices.V, which pro average optic extinction rat shows overlai varying the p 6% could be degrees off-ve the operation diagrams for were obtained observed at 13

Conclusion
In this paper we present a 4 channel transceiver for a point-to-point FTTH network at the central office side.The up-stream (O band) receivers were realized by the integration of III-V through a transfer printing technique.To our knowledge this is the first time that the transferprinting-based integration of pre-fabricated devices on integrated photonic circuits is demonstrated.A responsivity of 0.39-0.49A/W was obtained with four orders of magnitude lower responsivity of the C band signal, allowing a low cross talk between upstream and downstream data signals.Error free operation for a 2 7 -1 data stream at 10 Gbit/s was realized at a received power of 0 dBm and -11 dBm for upstream (without transimpedance amplifier) and downstream (with transimpedance amplifier) data signals, respectively.The efficient use of III-V material in the integration and the high accuracy alignment of the transfer printing system, makes the transfer printing technique promising for high yield, low-cost and wafer scale integration of III-V opto-electronic components on silicon photonic integrated circuits.
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Figure 4
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Fig. 5 .
Fig. 5. Photocurrent of the transfer printed O band PDs (a) at 1310 nm, (b) over the range of 1270 nm-1350 nm, (c) at 1550 nm (including the photodetector dark current).
Fig. 6 |S21| 2 Figure 7 characterizatio employed as modulator an pattern genera the O band a commercial h and filtered b for the silicon a bias tee.Va power meter a monitor the a received by th were fed to a

Fig. 11 .
Fig. 11.Measured bit error rate of the upstream data signal at 10 Gbit/s with the downstream link operational or off.