Energy harvesting optical modulators with sub-attojoule per bit electrical energy consumption

M. de Cea, A. H. Atabaki and R. J. Ram ()
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M. de Cea: Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A. H. Atabaki: Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
R. J. Ram: Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract The light input to a semiconductor optical modulator can constitute an electrical energy supply through the photovoltaic effect, which is unexploited in conventional modulators. In this work, we leverage this effect to demonstrate a silicon modulator with sub-aJ/bit electrical energy consumption at sub-GHz speeds, relevant for massively parallel input/output systems such as neural interfaces. We use the parasitic photovoltaic current to self-charge the modulator and a single transistor to modulate the stored charge. This way, the electrical driver only needs to charge the nano-scale gate of the transistor, with attojoule-scale energy dissipation. We implement this ‘photovoltaic modulator’ in a monolithic CMOS platform. This work demonstrates how close integration and co-design of electronics and photonics offers a path to optical switching with as few as 500 injected electrons and electrical energy consumption as low as 20 zJ/bit, achieved only by recovering the absorbed optical energy that is wasted in conventional modulation.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22460-1

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