Electro-optic modulators provide a key function in optical transceivers and increasingly in photonic programmable application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for machine learning and signal processing. However, both foundry-ready silicon-based modulators and conventional material-based devices utilizing lithium-niobate fall short in simultaneously providing high chip packaging density and fast speed. Current-driven ITO-based modulators have the potential to achieve both enabled by efficient light–matter interactions. Here, we introduce micrometer-compact Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI)-based modulators capable of exceeding 100 GHz switching rates. Integrating ITO-thin films atop a photonic waveguide, one can achieve an efficient V π L ${V}_{\pi }L$ = 0.1 V mm, spectrally broadband, and compact MZI phase shifter. Remarkably, this allows integrating more than 3500 of these modulators within the same chip area as only one single silicon MZI modulator. The modulator design introduced here features a holistic photonic, electronic, and RF-based optimization and includes an asymmetric MZI tuning step to optimize the extinction ratio (ER)-to-insertion loss (IL) and dielectric thickness sweep to balance the trade-offs between ER and speed. Driven by CMOS compatible bias voltage levels, this device is the first to address next-generation modulator demands for processors of the machine intelligence revolution, in addition to the edge and cloud computing demands as well as optical transceivers alike.

中文翻译：

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100 GHz 微米级紧凑型宽带单片 ITO Mach-Zehnder 干涉仪调制器，使封装密度提高 3500 倍

电光调制器在光收发器中提供关键功能，并且越来越多地用于用于机器学习和信号处理的光子可编程专用集成电路 (ASIC)。然而，代工就绪的硅基调制器和使用铌酸锂的传统材料基器件在同时提供高芯片封装密度和快速速度方面都存在不足。电流驱动的基于 ITO 的调制器有可能通过有效的光与物质相互作用来实现这两者。在这里，我们介绍了基于微米级紧凑型 Mach-Zehnder 干涉仪 (MZI) 的调制器，其开关速率能够超过 100 GHz。在光子波导上集成 ITO 薄膜，可以实现高效 五 π 大号 ${V}_{\pi }L$ = 0.1 V mm、光谱宽带和紧凑型 MZI 移相器。值得注意的是，这允许在同一芯片区域内集成超过 3500 个此类调制器，而仅使用一个硅 MZI 调制器。这里介绍的调制器设计具有基于光子、电子和射频的整体优化，并包括一个不对称 MZI 调谐步骤，以优化消光比 (ER) 与插入损耗 (IL) 和电介质厚度扫描以平衡权衡ER和速度之间。在 CMOS 兼容偏置电压电平的驱动下，该器件率先满足了机器智能革命处理器的下一代调制器需求，以及边缘和云计算需求以及光收发器等需求。