Ionizing Radiation Effects in Silicon Photonics Modulators

Abstract

Silicon Photonics shows considerable potential as a radiation-hard technology for building the optical data transmission links for future high-energy physics experiments at CERN. Optical modulators are a key component of optical links, which will need to withstand radiation doses in excess of 10 MGy. The geometrical parameters and doping concentrations of two popular types of Silicon Photonics modulators, Mach-Zehnder and Ring Modulators, have been varied in order to study their impact on the device radiation tolerance. They were exposed to an X-ray beam to test their resistance to ionizing radiation. The Ring Modulator with the highest doping concentration is shown to be the most tolerant, showing no degradation in performance up to the highest dose of 11 MGy. Moreover, we report first evidence of the dependence of the radiation tolerance on the Ring Modulator operating temperature.

Towards optical data transmission for high energy physics using silicon photonics

“…Silicon photonics has been identified as an excellent candidate for the development of the next generation of high-speed data links for high energy physics experiments. It has potential for the realisation of low-power and highly-integrated systems, without optical and electrical interference between Tx and Rx, as well as proven TID tolerance beyond 10 MGy [11]. A SiPh Tx test board based on RMs has been developed, and in this work we demonstrated that the modulator can be driven by CML signals, like the lpGBT Tx output.…”

System development of silicon photonics links for CERN experiments and accelerators

“…fibre links, in terms of link length (reach), bandwidth, and power consumption. Ring modulators have shown excellent tolerance to Total Ionising Dose (TID), up to 1 Grad [10]. Figure 2 shows two optical eye diagrams produced using a ring modulator integrated on our test PIC when driven by a commercial driver with 1 V pp modulation voltage.…”

Compact silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder modulators for high-energy physics

“…In this context, the pressing need to find alternative technologies for the evolution of radiation-hard optical links has led to the evaluation of silicon photonics (SiPh) [9]. SiPh components have indeed recently demonstrated impressive radiation tolerance thanks to the application of proper design hardening techniques and annealing procedures [10][11][12][13][14][15]. Although being still under deeper investigation regarding the stability of radiation -1 -…”