High-speed modulation of resonant CMOS photonic modulators in deep-submicron CMOS

Processor manufacturers have turned to parallelism to continue to improve processor performance, and the bandwidth demands of these systems have risen. Silicon photonics can lower the energy-per-bit of core-to-core and core-to-memory interconnects to help alleviate bandwidth bottlenecks. In this thesis, methods of controlling the amount of charge entering the PiN-diode structure of a photonic ring modulator are investigated to achieve high energy-efficiency in a constrained monolithic process. A digital modulator driver circuit is designed, simulated, fabricated and partially tested. This circuit uses a push-pull topology with preemphasis to reduce the energy per bit and to prevent the ring's optical passband from shifting to the next optical channel. A flexible driver test circuit for in-situ device characterization has been developed with a device-to-circuit modeling framework. There are many tradeoffs that must be analyzed from the system, circuit, and device levels. Thesis Supervisor: Vladimir Stojanovid Title: Associate Professor Acknowledgments I owe thanks to a great number of people for their guidance, inspiration, friendship, and support. First I would like to acknowledge my family, especially my parents and two brothers, who have always been there with encouragement to keep me on the right track. I could not have hoped for better colleagues at the Integrated Systems Group. Michael Georgas, Jonathan Leu, and Olivier Bichler, thank you for your incredible teamwork skills through all of our challenges. I also owe a heartfelt thanks to Susan Bates, Daryl Beetner, Van Stoecker, and Scott Blomquist for being truly inspiring individuals to me. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my illustrious research advisor, Vladimir Stojanovi6, for his continued support and dedication to my graduate education at MIT, and for setting a tremendous example as a scientist and researcher.