December 9, 2008--Intel (Santa Clara, CA) researchers have achieved world-record performance using a silicon-based avalanche photodetector (APD) that they say could lower costs and improve performance as compared to commercially available optical devices. The research results were published December 7 in Nature Photonics.
Silicon Photonics aims to address future bandwidth needs of data-intensive computing applications such as remote medicine and lifelike 3-D virtual worlds.
This technology could deliver higher-speed mainstream computing at a lower cost. This APD advance builds upon previous Intel breakthroughs such as fast silicon modulators and hybrid silicon lasers. Combined, these technologies could lead to the creation of entirely new kinds of digital machines capable of far greater performance than today.
The APD device used silicon and CMOS processing to achieve a gain-bandwidth product of 340 GHz--the best result ever measured for this key APD performance metric. This opens the door to lower the cost of optical links running at data rates of 40Gbps or higher and proves, for the first time, that a silicon photonics device can exceed the performance of a device made with traditional, more expensive optical materials such as indium phosphide.
Mario Paniccia, Ph.D., Intel Fellow and director of the company's Photonics Technology Lab, said, "In addition to optical communication, these silicon-based APDs could also be applied to other areas such as sensing, imaging, quantum cryptography or biological applications."
For more information, go to www.intel.com.
--Posted by Gail Overton