10-Gb/s NRZ Per Lane Data Links With Transferred Micro-LEDs With Record BER and Energy Efficiency

We demonstrate the highest data rate links using NRZ modulation of a transferred LED. LEDs transferred onto a sapphire backplane driven by a high-speed external source are modulated at 10Gb/s NRZ for a total extrapolated bandwidth of about 3Tb/s. The transmitters consume ~1pJ/bit with a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$10^{-10}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> BER. Arrays of ~300 GaN microLEDs transferred onto a Si backplane with integrated drivers are modulated at 3.5 Gb/s for a total bandwidth of ~1Tb/s. Such highly parallel optical interconnects have the potential to greatly improve the power consumption and density of chip-to-chip communications.