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SiFotonics Technologies: Leveraging Photonics Technology to Architect Optical Components
The continuous growth of lasers can be attributed to their ability to provide higher quality, more reliability, and more precise output than conventional mechanical methods. Advancement in laser technology is providing today’s businesses with multifaceted advantages, resulting in the ongoing expansion of the photonics industry. Furthermore, with the growing requirement of high bandwidth and high data transfer capabilities, the demand for silicon photonics in data centers is increasing. As a result, various organizations are unlocking numerous opportunities to leverage silicon photonics technology in their everyday operations. Set against this rapidly evolving backdrop, there’s more room for innovation to grow. As such, companies like SiFotonics Technologies Co., Ltd. were born.
Established in late 2006, SiFotonics is a privately funded world-leading fabless company specializing in silicon photonics components, Ge-on-Si optical devices, and integrated circuits for telecom, datacom, and consumer electronics. Partnering with several global semiconductor foundries, SiFotonics has deployed the most innovative silicon photonics technologies and solutions from the R&D phase to the production phase for its clients. The company has an IP portfolio with over 30 patents pending or issued, including a broad portfolio of patents on CMOS compatible photonics and related IC technology.
“In the past, the industry relied on a two-chip solution to produce an optical receiver: one GaAs or InP based photodetector and one trans-impedance amplifier,” begins Dr Dong Pan, CEO of SiFotonics. “We have overcome numerous technical challenges to integrating both the functions onto a single silicon chip that can be fabricated in commercially available foundries.” The Ge-on-Si technology, with its superiority in mass production and uniformity, is compatible with the CMOS manufacturing process. Understanding this, SiFotonics uses this technology to manufacture near-infrared (0.85um to 1.6um) photodiode (PD) instead of using InGaAs material for the fields of telecommunications, metro networks, and FTTHs.
Established in late 2006, SiFotonics is a privately funded world-leading fabless company specializing in silicon photonics components, Ge-on-Si optical devices, and integrated circuits for telecom, datacom, and consumer electronics. Partnering with several global semiconductor foundries, SiFotonics has deployed the most innovative silicon photonics technologies and solutions from the R&D phase to the production phase for its clients. The company has an IP portfolio with over 30 patents pending or issued, including a broad portfolio of patents on CMOS compatible photonics and related IC technology.
“In the past, the industry relied on a two-chip solution to produce an optical receiver: one GaAs or InP based photodetector and one trans-impedance amplifier,” begins Dr Dong Pan, CEO of SiFotonics. “We have overcome numerous technical challenges to integrating both the functions onto a single silicon chip that can be fabricated in commercially available foundries.” The Ge-on-Si technology, with its superiority in mass production and uniformity, is compatible with the CMOS manufacturing process. Understanding this, SiFotonics uses this technology to manufacture near-infrared (0.85um to 1.6um) photodiode (PD) instead of using InGaAs material for the fields of telecommunications, metro networks, and FTTHs.
SiFotonics Ge/Si PIN PDs have been optimized for their performance of high responsiveness, fast response, low capacitance, and low bias voltage. The optimal wavelength, data rate, array size, and array pitch of these devices can also be customized.
SiFotonics Ge/Si avalanche photodiodes (APDs) utilize separate absorption, charge, and multiplication (SACM) structure to achieve excellent absorption efficiency, high gain, and low noise factor, simultaneously benefitting from high responsiveness of germanium to near-infrared light and low k-factor of Si as multiplication layer. The company focuses on designing state-of-the-art Ge/Si APDs featuring solidity, uniformity, and superb reliability, and mass-produces 2.5 Gb/s and 10Gb/s APDs at the standard CMOS foundry. SiFotonics Ge/Si APDs have lower temperature dependence owing to the incorporation of Si as an avalanche material, compared to the traditional InP or InAlAs, enabling the operation over a wide temperature range from -40°C to 85°C. The company’s highspeed Ge/Si APDs demonstrate world record performance at multiple data rates and various communication wavelengths. Besides ultrahigh sensitivity, these APDs also show appreciable linearity and are ideal for advanced modulation schemes such as PAM4. SiFotonics also delivers detector array bare die chips by fully exploiting CMOS processing technology for the manufacturing of highly uniform PIN PDs and APDs.
As the network bandwidth is growing at staggering rates driven by the massive data flow of mobiles, clouds and videos, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can meet the lower-cost and smaller-footprint demands of optical modules. On the same lines, SiFotonics has built a state-of-the-art platform of 100G photonics integration for both long-haul and datacenter applications. The company has successfully developed 100G DP-QPSK integrated coherent receiver (ICR) chips and 100G PSM4 chips with high performance and high integrity.
Playing an instrumental role in SiFotonics’ success streak is an integrated receiver for 2.5 Gb/s optical communication applications for volume production, TP1001. The TP1001 receiver has passed all functional and reliability tests to become the world’s first commercial-grade monolithically integrated optical receiver chip using CMOS technology. This exciting development came as a result of implementing many years of cutting-edge research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s leading research institutions in the field of Silicon Photonics. “Moving ahead, we expect to bring a 10 Gb/s version of TP1001 to the market using the same technologies and processes,” concludes Dr Pan.
SiFotonics Ge/Si avalanche photodiodes (APDs) utilize separate absorption, charge, and multiplication (SACM) structure to achieve excellent absorption efficiency, high gain, and low noise factor, simultaneously benefitting from high responsiveness of germanium to near-infrared light and low k-factor of Si as multiplication layer. The company focuses on designing state-of-the-art Ge/Si APDs featuring solidity, uniformity, and superb reliability, and mass-produces 2.5 Gb/s and 10Gb/s APDs at the standard CMOS foundry. SiFotonics Ge/Si APDs have lower temperature dependence owing to the incorporation of Si as an avalanche material, compared to the traditional InP or InAlAs, enabling the operation over a wide temperature range from -40°C to 85°C. The company’s highspeed Ge/Si APDs demonstrate world record performance at multiple data rates and various communication wavelengths. Besides ultrahigh sensitivity, these APDs also show appreciable linearity and are ideal for advanced modulation schemes such as PAM4. SiFotonics also delivers detector array bare die chips by fully exploiting CMOS processing technology for the manufacturing of highly uniform PIN PDs and APDs.
As the network bandwidth is growing at staggering rates driven by the massive data flow of mobiles, clouds and videos, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can meet the lower-cost and smaller-footprint demands of optical modules. On the same lines, SiFotonics has built a state-of-the-art platform of 100G photonics integration for both long-haul and datacenter applications. The company has successfully developed 100G DP-QPSK integrated coherent receiver (ICR) chips and 100G PSM4 chips with high performance and high integrity.
Playing an instrumental role in SiFotonics’ success streak is an integrated receiver for 2.5 Gb/s optical communication applications for volume production, TP1001. The TP1001 receiver has passed all functional and reliability tests to become the world’s first commercial-grade monolithically integrated optical receiver chip using CMOS technology. This exciting development came as a result of implementing many years of cutting-edge research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s leading research institutions in the field of Silicon Photonics. “Moving ahead, we expect to bring a 10 Gb/s version of TP1001 to the market using the same technologies and processes,” concludes Dr Pan.
