In this book, silicon photonic integrated circuits are combined with electro-optic organic materials for realizing energy-efficient modulators with unprecedented performance. These silicon-organic hybrid Mach-Zehnder modulators feature a compact size, sub-Volt drive voltages, and they support data rates up to 84 Gbit/s. In addition, a wet chemical waveguide fabrication scheme and an efficient fiber-chip coupling scheme are presented.

In this book, silicon photonic integrated circuits are combined with electro-optic organic materials for realizing energy-efficient modulators with unprecedented performance. These silicon-organic hybrid Mach-Zehnder modulators feature a compact size, sub-Volt drive voltages, and they support data rates up to 84 Gbit/s. In addition, a wet chemical waveguide fabrication scheme and an efficient fiber-chip coupling scheme are presented. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

In this book, the first high-speed silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) modulator is demonstrated by exploiting a highly-nonlinear polymer cladding and a silicon waveguide. By using a liquid crystal cladding instead, an ultra-low power phase shifter is obtained. A third type of device is proposed for achieving three-wave mixing on the silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) platform. Finally, new physical constants which describe the optical absorption in charge accumulation/inversion layers in silicon are determined.

Cryogenic technologies promise to overcome existing bottlenecks in a range of science and engineering fields including quantum computing, high performance computing and single-photon communication systems. As these technologies mature and systems scale, a readout solution for high speed, low power data transfer between the cryogenic environment and room temperature becomes essential. The use of optical links for such data transfer - in what is known as cryogenic optical readout - is appealing due to the low heat conduction of optical fiber and the possibility to exploit wavelength division multiplexing architectures. However, existing demonstrations suffer from large power dissipation associated with amplifying the millivolt signals generated by the cryogenic systems. This thesis deals with the development of silicon photonic modulators operating at cryogenic temperatures and capable of modulating an optical carrier with millivol-level driving signals. We show cryogenic operation of CMOS photonic resonant modulators in the forward bias regime with high modulation efficiency and reduced power dissipation, and demonstrate cryogenic optical readout of a superconducting single photon detector. We also present a new operation mode for optical modulators that leverages parasitic photocurrent to achieve electrical gain and reduce power dissipation. Modulation with signal levels down to 4 mVpp and electrical power dissipation in the zJ/bit range is demonstrated. This thesis sets the foundation for silicon photonics to realize scalable, low power, high throughput cryogenic readout, addressing one of the key remaining challenges for the wide adoption of cryogenic technologies.

Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) modulators add a highly efficient nonlinear organic electro-optic cladding material to the silicon photonic platform, thereby enabling efficient electro-optic modulation. In this book, the application potential of SOH modulators is investigated. Proof-of-principle experiments show that they can be used for high-speed communications at symbol rates up to 100 GBd and operated directly from a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) without additional driver amplifiers.

"This book discusses the principles and the latest progress of silicon optical modulators as cutting-edge integrated photonic devices on silicon-photonic platforms, which play key roles in modern optical communications with low power consumption, small footprints, and low manufacturing costs. Silicon Mach-Zehnder optical modulators are emphasized as the principal small-footprint optical modulator because of its superior performance in high-speed optical modulation at operational temperatures beyond 100 degrees Celsius without power-consuming thermo-electric cooling in spectral bands over 100 nm"--

Various electrical and optical schemes used in Mach-Zehnder (MZ) silicon plasma dispersion effect modulators are explored. A rib waveguide reverse biased silicon diode modulator is designed, tested and found to operate at speeds up to 13 GHz with a V"L of 1.2 Vcm. MOS capacitor modulator designs are investigated as an alternative, but are not found to offer significant advantages. Modulators are also designed for fabrication in an actual CMOS process -a crucial step in the quest for low-cost integration with modern electronic devices. Photonic crystal structures, which promise smaller footprint sizes and lower power requirements, are also investigated, but it proves difficult to obtain a physically feasible design. Finally, a linearization scheme for Mach-Zehnder modulators is proposed to significantly improve signal fidelity in analog applications. Simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this scheme for reverse biased silicon diode modulators.