We demonstrate a silicon modulator with an intrinsic bandwidth of 10 GHz and data transmission from 6 Gbps to 10 Gbps. Such unprecedented bandwidth performance in silicon is achieved through improvements in material quality, device design, and driver circuitry.

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Abstract-Carrier and field dynamics in photoconductive switches are investigated by electrooptic sampling and voltagedependent reflectivity measurements. We show that the nonuniform field distribution due to the two-dimensional nature of coplanar photoconductive switches, in combination with the large difference in the mobilities of holes and electrons, determine the pronounced polarity dependence. Our measurements indicate that the pulse generation mechanism is a rapid voltage breakdown across the photoconductive switch and not a local field breakdown.

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We have measured the electroabsorption in low-temperature grown GaAs by performing room-temperature transmission experiments in the spectral range from 1.3 to 1.9 eV for different electric fields induced by a voltage applied to a metal-semiconductor-metal structure. The devices were separated from the substrate by using an epitaxial liftoff technique. Therefore, we have been able to observe the electro-optic effect at the fundamental band gap as well as at the split-off band edge. The absorption is clearly polarization dependent at the fundamental band gap but only weakly at the split-off band gap, in agreement with the theory of the Franz-Keldysh effect.