News: Optoelectronics
9 September 2021
POET teams with Silux to demo 400G optical engine during CIOE
POET Technologies Inc of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — a designer and developer of integrated optical engines, based on the POET Optical Interposer, for the optical communications, computing and sensing markets — is to conduct a live demonstration of a 400G optical engine to selected customers and business partners during the ICCSZ Conference on 14–15 September and concurrent with the 23rd China International Optoelectronics Exhibition (CIOE 2021) in Shenzhen, China on 16–18 September.
The 400G optical engine to be demonstrated is based on POET's novel hybrid integration platform, which incorporates four continuous wave (CW) lasers that have been flip-chip bonded to the Optical Interposer. The 400G CWDM4 optical engine has monolithically integrated optical multiplexers, waveguides and coupling structures. The silicon photonic modulator photonic integrated circuit (PIC) of Silux Technologies Co Ltd (SiluxTek) of Shanghai, China is being used to complete the 400G engine, providing high-speed modulation of light for data transmission. The pre-alpha prototype are being demonstrated live to invited guests in the ICCSZ forum and POET’s Shenzhen lab concurrent with the CIOE exhibitions.
POET’s Optical Interposer is designed with a proprietary optical interconnect layer deposited onto a standard 200mm (8 inch) silicon wafer. The optical interconnect layer contains embedded passive devices such as multiplexers, de-multiplexers, spot-size converters and waveguides that allow light to pass among the devices and into connected optical fibers. Active devices (such as lasers, modulators and detectors) communicate electrically at high frequencies through the metal layers that are embedded within the silicon wafer. This unique, patented architecture allows devices of different types to be seamlessly integrated, both optically and electrically, onto a single chip. In subsequent versions of the 400G optical engine, SiluxTek’s silicon photonic modulator will be passively flip-chipped onto the Optical Interposer, providing a low-cost, scalable, high-performance 400G solution.
“We are very pleased to have teamed-up with SiluxTek for this important live demonstration, which represents a key milestone for each company,” says POET’s president & general manager Vivek Rajgarhia. “Beyond proving the combined functions of 400G, we will conclusively demonstrate over the next few months the simplicity and versatility of POET’s Optical Interposer design, which allows leading-edge chips, like the SiluxTek modulator PIC, to be rapidly integrated into our platform. In addition, the fully integrated optical engines designed by POET are fabricated and tested at wafer-scale, resulting in lower cost and the ability to rapidly scale production,” he adds. “This is a moment, I believe, that will catch the attention of leading module and systems companies based in China, both in and out of the datacom market space, in the potential uses for the POET Optical Interposer across a wide spectrum of photonics applications.”
Concurrently, POET is also demonstrating its 100G CWDM transmitter, its 200G CWDM receiver and other remote light source designs.
