Abstract
The workhorse of future high speed short reach interconnect technology will be the optical modulator. These devices in silicon have experienced dramatic improvements over the last 6 years and the modulation bandwidth has increased from a few tens of MHz to over 30 GHz. However, the demands of optical interconnects are significant. Hence, the need for devices with compact real estate, broadband characteristics, operating at high speed and working for both polarisation is of outmost importance. Here we describe the approach taken at Surrey to meet these requirements from the early days to the more recent work where some initial data are introduced. The recent all-silicon optical modulator uses a CMOS compatible fabrication and demonstrates high data rate with large extinction ratio for TE and TM polarisations. This technology is not only compatible with conventional complementary MOS (CMOS) processing, but is also intended to facilitate a high yield, reliable fabrication process.