Large-scale silicon optical switches for optical interconnection

Large-scale optical switches are greatly demanded in building optical interconnections in data centers and high performance computers (HPCs). Silicon optical switches have advantages of being compact and CMOS process compatible, which can be easily monolithically integrated. However, there are difficulties to construct large ports silicon optical switches. One of them is the non-uniformity of the switch units in large scale silicon optical switches, which arises from the fabrication error and causes confusion in finding the unit optimum operation points. In this paper, we proposed a method to detect the optimum operating point in large scale switch with limited build-in power monitors. We also propose methods for improving the unbalanced crosstalk of cross/bar states in silicon electro-optical MZI switches and insertion losses. Our recent progress in large scale silicon optical switches, including 64 × 64 thermal-optical and 32 × 32 electro-optical switches will be introduced. To the best our knowledge, both of them are the largest scale silicon optical switches in their sections, respectively. The switches were fabricated on 340-nm SOI substrates with CMOS 180- nm processes. The crosstalk of the 32 × 32 electro-optic switch was -19.2dB to -25.1 dB, while the value of the 64 × 64 thermal-optic switch was -30 dB to -48.3 dB.