Demonstration of an optical chip-to-chip link in a 3D integrated electronic-photonic platform

Abstract

A full optical chip-to-chip link is demonstrated for the first time in a wafer-scale heterogeneous platform, where the photonics and CMOS chips are 3D integrated using wafer bonding and low-parasitic capacitance thru-oxide vias (TOVs). This development platform yields 1000s of functional photonic components as well as 16M transistors per chip module. The transmitter operates at 6Gb/s with an energy cost of 100fJ/bit and the receiver at 7Gb/s with a sensitivity of 26μA (-14.5dBm) and 340fJ/bit energy consumption. A full 5Gb/s chip-to-chip link, with the on-chip calibration and self-test, is demonstrated over a 100m single mode optical fiber with 560fJ/bit of electrical and 4.2pJ/bit of optical energy.