A unique and novel platform that combines III-V and silicon photonic components with ultra-low loss silicon nitride waveguides for monolithic integration of novel photonic circuits is presented. Successful (proof-of-principle) integration of eight hybrid III-V/silicon photodetectors and an arrayed waveguide grating is shown. The InGaAs photodiodes in this platform had average fiber-coupled responsivity of 0.36 A/W at 1550 nm, 30 GHz electrical bandwidth, and operated up to 50 Gb/s. The AWG had an insertion loss of 0.85 dB and adjacent-channel cross-talk less than -38 dB.

We demonstrate a flip-chip bonded modified uni-traveling carrier (MUTC) photodiode with an RF output power of 0.75 W (28.8 dBm) at 15 GHz and OIP3 as high as 59 dBm. The photodiode has a responsivity of 0.7 A/W, 3-dB bandwidth > 15 GHz, and saturation photocurrent > 180 mA at 11 V reverse bias.

In this paper, the hybrid silicon laser integration platform is analyzed from a thermal perspective. Key laser performance limitations are identified under high temperature and high electrical power operating conditions. Particular attention is paid to the low thermal conductivity buried oxide layer that is utilized for optical confinement. A novel approach is presented and demonstrated to reduce the effect of the buried oxide and its application to a variety of thermally limited hybrid silicon devices is discussed.

We demonstrate high current operation of an evanescently coupled Ge waveguide n-i-p photodetector grown on top of a Si rib waveguide. A 7.4 μm × 500 μm device was found to dissipate 1.003 W of power (125.49 mA at -8 V). 2-D thermal simulations of the device show that the relatively high thermal conductivities of the intrinsic Ge region and the p ⁺ doped Si layer result in efficient heat transfer and hence, lower absorber temperatures when compared to a similar InP based waveguide photodiode. Additionally, to determine the feasibility of these devices for analog photonic applications, we performed large signal and small signal radio frequency (RF) measurements as well as linearity measurements. At 1 GHz and 40 mA of photocurrent, a third order output intercept point (OIP3) of 36.49 dBm is measured. The maximum RF power extracted at 1 GHz is 14.17 dBm at 60 mA of photocurrent and 7 V reverse bias.

We report a Si/Ge waveguide-coupled uni-traveling carrier (UTC) photodiode for high-power high-speed applications. Using the uni-traveling carrier structure rather than a PIN structure, capacitance and power handling are decoupled from responsivity and transit-time, enabling a detector with a 40 GHz bandwidth and a dilute absorption profile. This photodiode had a responsivity at 1550 nm of 0.5 A/W and a -1 dB compression current of 1.5 mA at 40 GHz. A longer device with the same cross-section had a 33 GHz bandwidth, responsivity of 0.7 A/W, and -1 dB compression current of 2.1 mA at 30 GHz.

Compact, broadband, and high-resolution spectrometers are appealing for sensing applications, but difficult to fabricate. Here we show using calibration data a spectrometer based on a multimode waveguide with 2 GHz resolution, 250 GHz bandwidth, and a 1.6 mm × 2.1 mm footprint. Typically, such spectrometers have a bandwidth limited by the number of modes supported by the waveguide. In this case, an on-chip mode-exciting element is used to repeatably excite distinct collections of waveguide modes. This increases the number of independent spectral channels from the number of modes to this number squared, resulting in an extension of the usable range.