Integrated silicon carbide modulator for CMOS photonics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The electro-optic modulator encodes electrical signals onto an optical carrier, and is essential for the operation of global communication systems and data centers that society demands. An ideal modulator results from scalable semiconductor fabrication and is integrable with electronics. Accordingly, it is compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication processes. Moreover, modulators using the Pockels effect enables low loss, ultrafast, and wide-bandwidth data transmission. Although strained silicon-based modulators could satisfy these criteria, fundamental limitations such as two-photon absorption, poor thermal stability and a narrow transparency window hinder their performance. On the other hand, as a wide bandgap semiconductor material, silicon carbide is CMOS compatible and does not suffer from these limitations. Due to its combination of color centers, high breakdown voltage, and strong thermal conductivity, silicon carbide is a promising material for CMOS electronics and photonics with applications ranging from sensors to quantum and nonlinear photonics. Importantly, silicon carbide exhibits the Pockels effect, but a modulator has not been realized since the discovery of this effect more than three decades ago. Here we design, fabricate, and demonstrate the first Pockels modulator in silicon carbide. Specifically, we realize a waveguide-integrated, small form-factor, gigahertz-bandwidth modulator that can operate using CMOS-level drive voltages on a thin film of silicon carbide on insulator. Furthermore, the device features no signal degradation and stable operation at high optical intensities (913 kW/mm2), allowing for high optical signal-to-noise ratios for long distance communications. Our work unites Pockels electro-optics with a CMOS platform to pave the way for foundry-compatible integrated photonics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".