Demonstration of electro-optic half-adder using silicon photonic integrated circuits

Area of Science:

• Photonics
• Integrated Circuits
• Optical Computing

Background:

• Silicon photonics offers a platform for integrated optical circuits.
• Microring resonators (MRRs) are key components in photonic integrated circuits.
• Half-adder logic is fundamental for arithmetic operations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and demonstrate a silicon photonic integrated circuit capable of performing half-adder operations.
• To utilize cascaded microring resonators for bitwise Sum and Carry calculations.
• To achieve high-speed optical data processing.

Main Methods:

• Employed two cascaded microring resonators (MRRs) for half-adder functionality.
• Utilized PIN diodes for carrier injection modulation via the plasma dispersion effect.
• Integrated microheaters for resonance mismatch compensation using the thermo-optic effect.
• Demonstrated operation with electrical pulse sequences representing two operands.

Main Results:

• Successfully implemented a half-adder operation on a silicon photonic integrated circuit.
• Achieved bitwise Sum and Carry outputs at distinct ports.
• Demonstrated an operational speed of 100 Mbps for the addition of two bits.
• Validated the effectiveness of carrier injection modulation and thermo-optic compensation.

Conclusions:

• The developed silicon photonic circuit effectively performs half-adder operations.
• Cascaded MRRs with integrated modulation and compensation mechanisms are viable for optical arithmetic.
• This work contributes to the advancement of high-speed optical computing components.