Inter chip optical link achieves 5Tbit/s
A research team from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has developed a way to connect semiconductors optically. The technique, called photonic wire bonding, is said to enable data transmission rates of 'several terabits per second'.
While development of high performance optical emitters and receivers on chips is advanced, Professor Christian Koos said satisfactory solutions to linking chips optically had yet to be developed. "The biggest difficulty consists in aligning the chips precisely such that the waveguides meet," said Prof Koos, from KIT's Institutes of Photonics and Quantum Electronics.
In the KIT approach, the researchers first fixed the chips then structured a polymer based optical waveguide. To do this, the team used two photon polymerisation, in which a femtosecond laser writes the waveguide structure directly into a polymer located on the chip's surface. Using 1550nm light, the researchers have demonstrated data transmission rates in excess of 5Tbit/s.
Potential applications of photonic wire bonds lie in complex emitter-receiver systems for optical telecommunication as well as in sensor and measurement technology.
