Achievement

With the cross-disciplinary training, we performed two experiments that are important for integrating silicon photonics into next generation optical interconnects for datacenters and high-performance computing. One experiment identified performance degradation in injection mode microring modulators as the modulated data pattern increased in length, which limits the type of transmitter encoding that can be used in a commercial transmission system. The work was selected as a semi-finalist in the Corning Outstanding Student Paper Competition. The other experiment showcased controlled microring based optical add-drop filter using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Here we showed a silicon photonic device integrated with a control system that can lead to commercialization. Also we found that appropriate heater design can drastically simplify the control used to thermally tune the silicon photonic devices.