Ultralow power silicon microdisk modulators and switches

Abstract

We demonstrate a 4 mum silicon microdisk modulator with a power consumption of 85 fJ/bit. The modulator utilizes a reverse-biased, vertical p-n junction to achieve 10 Gb/s data transmission with 3.5 V drive voltage, BER<10-12, and without signal pre-emphasis. High-speed silicon bandpass switches are constructed from pairs of modulators.