Graphene electro-absorption modulators integrated at wafer-scale in a CMOS fab

Abstract

We demonstrate graphene electro-absorption modulators (EAM) integrated on 300mm wafers. The integration is based on imec’s 300mm silicon photonics platform and the full integration sequence is using standard CMOS production tools expect for the 6-inch CVD graphene growth and transfer, transferred by Graphenea. 164x TE EAMs were measured per wafer and demonstrate 90% yield with modulation efficiency (ME) of 41±5.6 dB/mm for 8V voltage swing, after process optimization. The 3dB bandwidth of the EAMs is 14.9±1.2 GHz for the device with 50µm active length. Both parameters show comparable performance with lab-based devices, obtained on coupons using similar CVD graphene. This work paves the way to enable high-volume manufacturing of 2D-material-based photonics devices.