Technologies
This technology is a method for automatic wavelength locking and thermal stabilization of silicon microring resonators that enables their use in functional integrated optoelectronic circuits.
In order for silicon microring resonators to work properly in optical interconnects and related device applications, their resonance must maintain alignment with a specific laser wavelength. This alignment is difficult to achieve due to the susceptibility of microrings to small fluctuations in temperature and wavelength. Currently, there is no scalable, energy-efficient method to automatically track and lock the microring resonance with the laser wavelength.
This technology utilizes dithering signals for automatic wavelength locking and thermal stabilization of microring resonators. The use of dithering signals to achieve wavelength locking obviates the requirement for bulky tunable lasers or monochromators, thereby creating an energy-efficient and scalable solution for future device applications. Importantly, such scalability enables the integration of multiple microring resonators into wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical interconnects for high-speed optical communication applications.
The technology has been successfully tested in several integrated CMOS prototypes.
IR CU13185
Licensing Contact: Greg Maskel