Germanium-on-silicon avalanche photodetector arrays at 1,550nm for lidar

[Senang Diri]

https://www.electrooptics.com/product/germanium-silicon-avalanche-photodetector-arrays-1550nm-lidar

Germanium-on-silicon avalanche photodetector arrays at 1,550nm for lidar


19 November 2018

tags: SENSORS AND DETECTORSSILICON PHOTONICSLIDAR
Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF), world’s first silicon photonics specialty foundry today announced the availability of 1550nm wavelength LIDAR sensor based on Germanium-on-Silicon Avalanche Photodetector Arrays (APD) technology.

AMF’s LIDAR sensor offers superior performance and cost advantage over conventional solid-state sensors. The latter are fabricated with expensive materials, and encounter short range problem due to low power constraint on short wavelength 905nm.

Dr. Tan Yong Tsong, CEO of AMF said, “the recent rising of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) for autonomous vehicles and robotics widened the market for avalanche photodetectors (APDs). APDs are essential in LIDAR applications due to the low optical signal strength detection capability. In LIDAR applications, the backscattered light from the objective can be glimmer, which requires high-sensitive detectors with high-angular resolution.”

Over the past two decades, high-gain, low noise Si APDs and Silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) has been well developed and commercialized for visible wavelength ranges. However, collimated laser beams of 905nm and shorter wavelength are especially dangerous to pedestrian even at relatively low power, as the lens focuses the light onto a tiny spot on the retina and has potential ocular hazard.

The safety requirements in aspect of maximum permissible exposure (MPE) thus limits the detecting range of LIDAR at these wavelengths with confined transmitter energy. In contrast, at 1550nm, most of the light will be absorbed by the transparent parts of the eyeball before it reaches the retina, which relax the MPE requirement for nearinfrared (NIR) LIDAR. The large MPE capability attracts industries’ attention of LIDAR at 1550nm, and its receiving component of APDs.

The state-of-the-art commercially available APDs at 1550nm are mostly III-V APDs, which is non-CMOS compatible and of high price. Thus leading to an urgent demand of germanium-based APD or APD arrays with potential integration capabilities. Along the direction, single-element separate absorption, charge, and multiplication (SACM) Ge-on-Si APDs has been studied in recent few years, it has been demonstrated to achieve a low dark current and high gain-bandwidth product. AMF (while under IME,Astar) has reported a 310GHz gain-bandwidth product SACM Ge APD back in 2013. However, in LIDAR applications, the receivers only detect the weak scattered light from the targets, which requires APDs with both high-sensitivity and large detection area, in order to enhance the possibility of capturing the scattered light with better signal-to-noise ratio.

Recently, AMF developed such Ge-on-Si avalanche photodetector (APD) arrays working at 1550nm wavelength band, targeting for LIDAR application. Our demonstrated single APD pixel reveals a responsivity of ~ 3.2A/W at the normal operation voltage of 90% breakdown voltage, with a dark current of ~2.2 mA, a breakdown thermal coefficient of ~0.029 V/oC, and a 3-dB bandwidth of ~ 9.0 GHz. The 25 pixels on a 5-by-5 APD array shows high uniformity, with a responsivity variation of less than 5%, with the bandwidth of up to 1GHz, which is suitable for Lidar application.

 

[Senang Diri]

https://www.prweb.com/releases/amf_...hotonic_integrated_circuits/prweb15798322.htm


AMF and Lumerical Deliver Key Component of Ecosystem for Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits


Lumerical Compact Model Libraries support AMF Silicon Photonics process | Global leaders team to bolster productivity of photonic designers

SINGAPORE (PRWEB) OCTOBER 08, 2018

Advanced Micro Foundry (http://www.advmf.com), a spin-off from Singapore's renowned A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics, is a Singapore-based manufacturer of Silicon Photonics integrated circuits. Partnering with Lumerical Inc. (http://www.lumerical.com), a leading developer of photonic simulation tools, AMF today announced the availability of a Compact Model Library (CML) for its Silicon Photonics process.

Integrating multiple photonic components on a single chip enables Silicon Photonics integrated circuit chips to achieve unprecedented performance, functionality, and economies of scale when compared to traditional photonics equivalents; rendering Silicon Photonics invaluable in multiple technologies and market domains. Smaller form factor and performance gain present Silicon Photonics with disruptive opportunities which were never possible for traditional optics, limited by material which could not be integrated and scaled like electronics.

AMF’s Silicon Photonics process is ideal for applications such as cloud computing, cloud security, hyper scale data centers, 5G communications, autonomous vehicles, robotics, telecommunications, AR and VR, and point-of-care diagnostic systems. Through a decade long intensive effort, AMF developed a comprehensive silicon photonic device library, which includes active and passive functional blocks. These blocks are now able to be simulated through the new CML using Lumerical’s INTERCONNECT Circuit Simulator.

The CML includes passive devices such as optical waveguide device, wavelength division multiplexer (WDM), micro resonator devices, and fiber-to-waveguide couplers as well as active devices such as thermally tunable devices, high-speed modulator, and large-bandwidth waveguide photodetector.

Photonic designers can leverage these pre-developed blocks to design and verify their photonics products more quickly and efficiently without crafting physical prototypes. These predictive capabilities enable photonics designers to validate designs prior to manufacturing, create new product concepts, and explore long-term innovative photonics research such as quantum computing.

“Combining our decade of silicon photonic leadership with Lumerical’s 15 years of photonic simulation leadership results in a capability that will increase our customers’ productivity and throughput. I’m looking forward to accelerating the amount of Silicon Photonic based commercial products as a result,” said Louis Lee, Business Operations Director of AMF.

James Pond, CTO of Lumerical said “Silicon Photonics is a key technology in enabling photonics to realize it’s potential by taking it from the research lab into the commercial world. This collaboration with AMF will help Silicon Photonics make its huge impact on technology advancement.”

AMF Silicon Photonics CML is available immediately from AMF. AMF CML Reader licenses are available immediately from Lumerical.

About AMF
AMF specializes in customizable prototyping and volume wafer manufacturing services for Silicon Photonics integrated circuits. AMF manufacturing services are the back-bone technology to a global customer base in the emerging markets of Data Centers, Telecom, Automotive, Medical and environmental sensors.

A spin-off from IME, A*STAR, AMF was incorporated in 2017. AMF’s core technology has been globally acclaimed as technology par excellence over the last decade and widely deployed in multiple markets.

AMF offers customize Foundry services which enable customers to design, develop and manufacture integrated Photonics Chips for a broad range of applications – Cloud computing, Cloud security, 5G communications, Autonomous Vehicles and Diagnostic chips. AMF services are offered in the format of customizable technology platforms based on Silicon, SOI (Silicon On Insulator), SiN (Silicon Nitride) & Germanium materials.

From concept to the manufacturing of a final product, our multidisciplinary team of Optical and Semiconductor experts work closely with our customers to ensure their utmost satisfaction. At AMF, we are focused on our customer’s success and strive to support them through their entire product development and manufacturing ramp stages.

As AMF expands its fabrication facilities and operations to address the growing volume demands of our customers, we continue to leverage on our core strengths of Technology Innovation, Customer Service, Quality and Flexibility.

About Lumerical
Lumerical develops photonic simulation software – tools which enable product designers to understand light, and predict how it behaves within complex structures, circuits, and systems. Since being founded in 2003, Lumerical has grown to license its design tools in over 50 countries and its customers include 10 of the top 15 companies in the S&P 1200 Global IT index, and 46 of the top 50 research universities as rated by the Times Higher Education rankings. Lumerical’s substantial impact on the photonic design and simulation community means its tools are among the most widely cited in the scientific press, with references in more than 10,000 academic publications and patents. Lumerical enables its customers to achieve more with light, and establish a leading position in the development of transformative technologies employing photonics.

 

[Senang Diri]

https://www.ofcconference.org/en-us...ed-micro-foundry-releases-new-fabrication-pl/

Advanced Micro Foundry Releases New Fabrication Platform for 400Gbps application

04 March 2019

Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF) Pte Ltd, the world’s first silicon photonics specialty foundry, announced the release of a new fabrication Platform for 400Gbps application, including advanced SiN-on-SOI integration flow, passive and high-speed devices and related Process Design Kits (PDK).

The new Platform aims at supporting the data transfer and telecommunication industries facing an ever-increasing demand from cloud computing and big data applications. The bandwidth requirement challenges the 100Gbps optical link technology used in the current Data Center architecture leading to the adoption of 400Gbps technology. With this objective, the new AMF Platform offers advanced solutions for high-bandwidth and low power applications.



Dr. Patrick Lo, President and Head of the R&D Division said that “after the release of our 100G PDK based on a 28GBaud technology in 2018, AMF is keeping an aggressive pace of innovation by releasing this new 400G Platform, based on a 56GBaud device library, to the Silicon Photonics industry. Our technical teams will work closely with our customers to support their transition to this new platform”.



Overcoming various challenges, the platform is highly flexible and includes the release of new building blocks critical to reaching the high performance required by the Data Center expansion and the launch of 5G (i.e. 200G and 400G).



One of these new devices is a MZI-based modulator with bandwidth over 32GHz in both O-band and C-band. It successfully achieved 62Gpbs in an NRZ platform and was also demonstrated in a PAM4 configuration that can directly support 400G FR/LR8 modules.



The newly released devices also include a new Ge photodetector achieving a bandwidth over 35GHz and a dark current below 100nA with no degradation of responsivity owing to improvements of the epitaxial process.



All the new devices are available in conjunction with the existing solutions offered by AMF and already widely adopted by AMF customers. Those include:



- 0.13um CMOS equivalent process platform based on 193- Lithography

- Waveguides with advanced passive devices including low-loss couplers, wavelength multiplexing filter, polarization splitter, polarization rotator

- Multiple ion-implantation and multi-layer metallization for high speed modulators, Ge photodetectors, and thermal phase shifters

- Integration of multi-layered SiN waveguides enabling low propagation loss for large scale photonic integrated circuits and large tolerance for wavelength division multiplexer (WDM)

- Polycrystalline silicon based grating coupler overlay for low-loss vertical coupling

- Packaging solutions with various MEMS structures for laser diode and fiber assembly

- UBM and solder bumping for electro-photonic flip-chip bonding



After thorough testing, the new 400G integrated high-bandwidth Platform was recently deployed to production.



The Company will be exhibiting at OFC in San Diego present this new 400G Platform offering (Booth-5440). As a dedicated pure-play Silicon Photonics Foundry, AMF will continue to drive its advanced technology roadmap to deliver both Platform and Customer-Driven technology and business solutions, including 800G, 1.6T bandwidths and OEIC packaging solutions.



Advanced Micro Foundry Pte. Ltd. (AMF), a spin-off from the Institute of Microelectronics (IME - Singapore], is a leading commercial pure-play Silicon Photonics foundry.