A 3.584 Tbps coherent receiver chip on InP-LiNbO3 wafer-level integration platform
The rapid advancement of the thin-film lithium niobate (LiNbO<sub>3</sub>) platform has established it as a premier choice for high-performance photonics integrated circuits. However, the scalability and cost-efficiency of this platform are hindered by the reliance on chip-level fabrication and integration for passive and active components, necessitating a robust wafer-level LiNbO<sub>3</sub> heterogeneous integration platform. Despite its critical role in enabling ultrahigh-speed optical interconnects, as well as optical mmWave/THz sensing and communication, the realization of ultrahigh-speed photodiodes and optical coherent receivers on the LiNbO₃ platform remains an unresolved challenge. This is primarily due to the challenges associated with the large-scale integration of direct-bandgap materials. To address these challenges, we have developed a scalable, high-speed InP-LiNbO₃ wafer-level heterogeneous integration platform. This platform facilitates the fabrication of ultrahigh-speed photodiodes with a bandwidth of 140 GHz, capable of receiving high-quality 100-Gbaud pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) signals. Moreover, we demonstrate a seven-channel, single-polarization I-Q coherent receiver chip with an aggregate receiving capacity of 3.584 Tbit s<sup>-1</sup>. This coherent receiver exhibits a balanced detection bandwidth of 60 GHz and a common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) exceeding 20 dB. It achieves receiving capacities of 600 Gbit s<sup>-1</sup> λ<sup>-1</sup> with a 100-Gbaud 64-QAM signal and 512 Gbit s<sup>-1</sup> λ<sup>-1</sup> with a 128-Gbaud 16-QAM signal. Furthermore, energy consumption as low as 9.6 fJ bit<sup>-1</sup> and 13.5 fJ bit<sup>-1</sup> is achieved for 200 Gbit s<sup>-1</sup> and 400 Gbit s<sup>-1</sup> capacities, respectively. Our work provides a viable pathway toward enabling Pbps hyperscale data center interconnects, as well as optical mmWave/THz sensing and communication.
Authors
- Yake Chen
- Chenghao Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8846-4130)
- Xihua Zou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4229)
- Jihui Sun
- Xiaojun Xie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7885-6181)
- Xingchen He (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9136-7913)
- Chao Wei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4094-1860)
- Lianshan Yan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3633-7161)
- Wei Pan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5529-1827)
- Lin Jiang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8282-1176)
- Jia Ye
Institutions
- Southwest Jiaotong University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Light Science & Applications
- Published
- 2025-04-25
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-025-01821-1
- Citations
- 12
- Primary Topic
- Photonic and Optical Devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 8.77
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- University of Science and Technology of China
- National Key Research and Development Program of China