PhD Defense of Folly AYI-YOVO

The ever-increasing demand for telecommunications needs has highlighted the intrinsic limitations of electronics. Photonics has proven to be a suitable solution to its limitations.
STMicroelectronics has developed a silicon photonic platform called PIC25G that allows single-channel transmission at 25 Go/s. The data rate increase with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) encounter some constraints. The proposed solution is based on a hybrid approach integrating silicon photonics and glass ions exchanged photonics developed at the IMEP-LaHC laboratory.
The solution consists of a glass interposer on which a silicon photonics chip is assembled. First, the studies focused on the components of the silicon chip especially on the optimization of grating couplers and (de)-multiplexers based on cascaded Mach Zehnder interferometers. Then, the optical and electrical passive components of the glass interposer were studied and realized. The feasibility of an optical coupling between the silicon chip and the glass interposer has been demonstrated. Finally, the test structures needed to validate the proposed solution were studied. These test structures allowed to transmit radiofrequency signals up to 40 GHz between the silicon chip and the glass interposer.
A new approach to realize the optical waveguides of the interposer has been suggested and carried out in order to address the fabrication issues. Ultimately, this approach will provide an electro-optical module for high-speed applications.