Electro optical characterization of a silicon microsphere

Abstract

In today’s world, with the development of optoelectronics, metal interconnections are no longer limiting factor for the performance of electronic systems. Replacing the metal interconnections by optical interconnections could provide low power dissipation, low latencies, and high bandwiths. Such optical interconnections rely on the integration of micro-photonics and microelectronics. Having high quality factors, optical microsphere resonators are ideal circuit elements for wavelength division multiplexing. Silicon, as a common semiconductor the building block of the integrated circuits, also is a very important component with its optical properties. We have experimentally observed the shifts in resonance wavelengths of an electrically driven silicon microsphere of 1000 microns in diameter, in the near IR. We have used a distributed feedback (DFB) laser at 1475nm, and applied dc voltages ranging from -17V to 9V to the microsphere and observed the respected shifts in the resonance wavelengths around 0.005 nm to 0.080 nm.