Ultrafast Electronic-Photonic Integrated Circuits and Systems

Hui Wu, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Rochester

CSB 209

Abstract

Among all emerging post-CMOS device technologies, silicon photonics has become one of the prime candidates for future high-speed integrated circuits and systems. Our research efforts in silicon photonics focus on how to organically integrate photonic devices (lasers, photodetectors, waveguides, electro-optic modulators, micro-lens, micro-mirrors and others) together with ultrafast electronics, and create Electronic-Photonic Integrated Circuits and Systems (EPICS). EPICS will enable some exciting new applications such as inter-/intra-chip optical interconnects, free-space optical wireless communications, and photonic analog-to-digital converters. Our goal is to explore how to effectively utilize integration to achieve the best circuit and system performance in EPICS, and develop circuit and system integration techniques and design methodologies that will generate fundamental and long-lasting impacts, despite the rapid advances in high-speed electronic and photonic devices.

This talk will highlight our recent research on EPICS for high speed communications and interconnects. I will show a new silicon photodetector structure which achieved the best bandwidth-responsivity product for integrated silicon photodetectors fabricated in standard CMOS. A new on-chip optical interconnect system, 3-D Integrated Intrachip Free-Space Optical Interconnect, will also been demonstrated with the latest device fabrication and system integration results. Finally our work on waveguide-based optical interconnects based on a new micro-ring based electrooptic modulator will be presented.       

Speaker Biography

Hui Wu received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and M.Sc. degree in microelectronics from Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 1996 and 1998, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, in June 2003, respectively.

He was a co-op researcher at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center during the summer of 2001. In 2002-2003, he was with Axiom Microdevices developing fully-integrated CMOS power amplifiers for cellular communications. In September 2003, he joined the faculty of the University of Rochester, where he is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of Laboratory for Advanced Integrated Circuits and Systems. His current research interests are in high-speed integrated circuits and systems. He has authored over 40 peer-reviewed technical papers and holds several patents.