An object is to provide a semiconductor device of which a manufacturing process is not complicated and by which cost can be suppressed, by forming a thin film transistor using an oxide semiconductor film typified by zinc oxide, and a manufacturing method thereof. For the semiconductor device, a gate electrode is formed over a substrate; a gate insulating film is formed covering the gate electrode; an oxide semiconductor film is formed over the gate insulating film; and a first conductive film and a second conductive film are formed over the oxide semiconductor film. The oxide semiconductor film has at least a crystallized region in a channel region.

Semiconductor device, and manufacturing method thereof

The silicon chip has been the mainstay of the electronics industry for the last 40 years and has revolutionized the way the world operates. Today, a silicon chip the size of a fingernail contains nearly 1 billion transistors and has the computing power that only a decade ago would take up an entire room of servers. As the relentless pursuit of Moore's law continues, and Internet-based communication continues to grow, the bandwidth demands needed to feed these devices will continue to increase and push the limits of copper-based signaling technologies. These signaling limitations will necessitate optical-based solutions. However, any optical solution must be based on low-cost technologies if it is to be applied to the mass market. Silicon photonics, mainly based on SOI technology, has recently attracted a great deal of attention. Recent advances and breakthroughs in silicon photonic device performance have shown that silicon can be considered a material onto which one can build optical devices. While significant efforts are needed to improve device performance and commercialize these technologies, progress is moving at a rapid rate. More research in the area of integration, both photonic and electronic, is needed. The future is looking bright. Silicon photonics could provide low-cost opto-electronic solutions for applications ranging from telecommunications down to chip-to-chip interconnects, as well as emerging areas such as optical sensing technology and biomedical applications. The ability to utilize existing CMOS infrastructure and manufacture these silicon photonic devices in the same facilities that today produce electronics could enable low-cost optical devices, and in the future, revolutionize optical communications

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6668/34347/01638290.pdf

Silicon photonics

An electronic–photonic microprocessor chip manufactured using a conventional microelectronics foundry process is demonstrated; the chip contains 70 million transistors and 850 photonic components and directly uses light to communicate to other chips. The rapid transfer of data between chips in computer systems and data centres has become one of the bottlenecks in modern information processing. One way of increasing speeds is to use optical connections rather than electrical wires and the past decade has seen significant efforts to develop silicon-based nanophotonic approaches to integrate such links within silicon chips, but incompatibility between the manufacturing processes used in electronics and photonics has proved a hindrance. Now Chen Sun et al. describe a 'system on a chip' microprocessor that successfully integrates electronics and photonics yet is produced using standard microelectronic chip fabrication techniques. The resulting microprocessor combines 70 million transistors and 850 photonic components and can communicate optically with the outside world. This result promises a way forward for new fast, low-power computing systems architectures. Data transport across short electrical wires is limited by both bandwidth and power density, which creates a performance bottleneck for semiconductor microchips in modern computer systems—from mobile phones to large-scale data centres. These limitations can be overcome1,2,3 by using optical communications based on chip-scale electronic–photonic systems4,5,6,7 enabled by silicon-based nanophotonic devices8. However, combining electronics and photonics on the same chip has proved challenging, owing to microchip manufacturing conflicts between electronics and photonics. Consequently, current electronic–photonic chips9,10,11 are limited to niche manufacturing processes and include only a few optical devices alongside simple circuits. Here we report an electronic–photonic system on a single chip integrating over 70 million transistors and 850 photonic components that work together to provide logic, memory, and interconnect functions. This system is a realization of a microprocessor that uses on-chip photonic devices to directly communicate with other chips using light. To integrate electronics and photonics at the scale of a microprocessor chip, we adopt a ‘zero-change’ approach to the integration of photonics. Instead of developing a custom process to enable the fabrication of photonics12, which would complicate or eliminate the possibility of integration with state-of-the-art transistors at large scale and at high yield, we design optical devices using a standard microelectronics foundry process that is used for modern microprocessors13,14,15,16. This demonstration could represent the beginning of an era of chip-scale electronic–photonic systems with the potential to transform computing system architectures, enabling more powerful computers, from network infrastructure to data centres and supercomputers.

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Single-chip microprocessor that communicates directly using light

Silicon photonics research can be dated back to the 1980s. However, the previous decade has witnessed an explosive growth in the field. Silicon photonics is a disruptive technology that is poised to revolutionize a number of application areas, for example, data centers, high-performance computing and sensing. The key driving force behind silicon photonics is the ability to use CMOS-like fabrication resulting in high-volume production at low cost. This is a key enabling factor for bringing photonics to a range of technology areas where the costs of implementation using traditional photonic elements such as those used for the telecommunications industry would be prohibitive. Silicon does however have a number of shortcomings as a photonic material. In its basic form it is not an ideal material in which to produce light sources, optical modulators or photodetectors for example. A wealth of research effort from both academia and industry in recent years has fueled the demonstration of multiple solutions to these and other problems, and as time progresses new approaches are increasingly being conceived. It is clear that silicon photonics has a bright future. However, with a growing number of approaches available, what will the silicon photonic integrated circuit of the future look like? This roadmap on silicon photonics delves into the different technology and application areas of the field giving an insight into the state-of-the-art as well as current and future challenges faced by researchers worldwide. Contributions authored by experts from both industry and academia provide an overview and outlook for the silicon waveguide platform, optical sources, optical modulators, photodetectors, integration approaches, packaging, applications of silicon photonics and approaches required to satisfy applications at mid-infrared wavelengths. Advances in science and technology required to meet challenges faced by the field in each of these areas are also addressed together with predictions of where the field is destined to reach.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2040-8978/18/7/073003/pdf

Roadmap on silicon photonics

We present a high-speed and highly scalable silicon optical modulator based on the free carrier plasma dispersion effect. The fast refractive index modulation of the device is due to electric-field-induced carrier depletion in a Silicon-on-Insulator waveguide containing a reverse biased pn junction. To achieve high-speed performance, a travelling-wave design is used to allow co-propagation of electrical and optical signals along the waveguide. We demonstrate high-frequency modulator optical response with 3 dB bandwidth of ~20 GHz and data transmission up to 30 Gb/s. Such high-speed data transmission capability will enable silicon modulators to be one of the key building blocks for integrated silicon photonic chips for next generation communication networks as well as future high performance computing applications.

High-speed optical modulation based on carrier depletion in a silicon waveguide

A dual-channel 10 Gb/s per channel single-chip optoelectronic transceiver has been demonstrated in a 0.13-mum CMOS SOI technology. The transceiver integrates conventionally discrete optoelectronic functions such as high-speed 10-Gb/s electro-optic modulation and 10-Gb/s optical reception on an SOI substrate using a standard CMOS process. The high optical index contrast between silicon (n=3.5) and its oxide (n=1.5) allows for very large scale integration of optical devices, while the use of a standard CMOS process allows these devices to be seamlessly fabricated together with electronics on the same substrate. Such a high level of optoelectronic integration is unprecedented, and serves to substantially reduce system footprint and power dissipation, allowing efficient scaling to higher data rates and broader functionality. This paper describes the photonic components, electronic blocks, and architecture of a CMOS photonic transceiver that achieves an aggregate data rate of 20Gb/s in a dual-channel package, with a BER of less than 10-15 and a power consumption of 1.25 W per channel with both channels operating simultaneously

A Fully Integrated 4 $\times$ 10-Gb/s DWDM Optoelectronic Transceiver Implemented in a Standard 0.13 $\mu{\hbox {m}}$ CMOS SOI Technology

We demonstrate monolithically integrated 4×10 Gb/s WDM transceivers built in a production 130 nm SOI CMOS process. Only light sources are external to the chip. 40 Gb/s error-free, bidirectional transmission is demonstrated.

Monolithically integrated high-speed CMOS photonic transceivers

We have demonstrated a 40-Gb/s optoelectronic transceiver in a quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP) module. Each module includes a 4xlO-Gb/s, 0.13 μm CMOS silicon-on-insulator integrated optoelectronic transceiver chip co-packaged with a single, externally modulated CW laser.

A 40-Gb/s QSFP Optoelectronic Transceiver in a 0.13μm CMOS Silicon-on-Insulator Technology

Methods and systems for optoelectronics transceivers integrated on a CMOS chip are disclosed and may include receiving optical signals from optical fibers via grating couplers on a top surface of a CMOS chip, which may include a guard ring. Photodetectors may be integrated in the CMOS chip. A CW optical signal may be received from a laser source via grating couplers, and may be modulated using optical modulators, which may be Mach-Zehnder and/or ring modulators. Circuitry in the CMOS chip may drive the optical modulators. The modulated optical signal may be communicated out of the top surface of the CMOS chip into optical fibers via grating couplers. The received optical signals may be communicated between devices via waveguides. The photodetectors may include germanium waveguide photodiodes, avalanche photodiodes, and/or heterojunction diodes. The CW optical signal may be generated using an edge-emitting and/or a vertical-cavity surface emitting semiconductor laser.

Method and system for optoelectronics transceivers integrated on a CMOS chip

Monolithic integration of both photonic and electronic components operating at 10Gb/s in a 0.13mum SOI CMOS process for PowerPC processors is presented. A modulator uses free carrier plasma dispersion in a reverse-biased PIN optical phase shifter in a Mach-Zender interferometer. An AWG demultiplexer uses a forward-biased PIN phase shifter to compensate the optical path length improving the channel separation

Sina Mirsaidi

Papers

A Fully Integrated 4 $\times$ 10-Gb/s DWDM Optoelectronic Transceiver Implemented in a Standard 0.13 $\mu{\hbox {m}}$ CMOS SOI Technology

Monolithically integrated high-speed CMOS photonic transceivers

A 40-Gb/s QSFP Optoelectronic Transceiver in a 0.13μm CMOS Silicon-on-Insulator Technology

Method and system for optoelectronics transceivers integrated on a CMOS chip

A 10Gb/s photonic modulator and WDM MUX/DEMUX integrated with electronics in 0.13/spl mu/m SOI CMOS