High-speed, energy-efficient InP photonic integrated circuits for transceivers

Indium-Phosphide photonic integrated circuits offer a rich array of energy-efficient components including electro-optic modulators, lasers, multiplexers and detectors in one monolithic platform. In the GETPICS project, three parallel tracks have been explored to identify routes for further performance advances in speed, energy-efficiency and bandwidth-density. Electronic matching has been studied in combination with on-chip RF design and generic processes have been deployed with semi-insulating substrates to achieve high speed > 50Gb/s modulation in PIC based circuits. Buried heterostructures have been integrated with a comprehensive integration platform to achieve low threshold lasers integrated with multiplexers. Selective area growth has been separately integrated to create arrays of multi-band tuneable laser sources. In this paper, we will present an overview of recent innovations in the creation of high performance transceiver PIC technologies for optical interconnects. We showcase circuits using InP integrated photonics to create high-speed, energy-efficient and optically-multiplexed circuits and highlight the methods to combine technologies on one monolithic platform.