A TRANSCEIVER PIC FOR BIDIRECTIONAL OPTICAL COMMUNICATION FABRICATED BY BANDGAP ENERGY CONTROLLED SELECTIVE MOVPE

As a low-cost optical transceiver for access network systems, we propo se a new monolithic transceiver photonic integrated circuit (PIG) fabr icated by bandgap energy controlled selective metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). In the PIG, all optical components are monolithicall y integrated. Thus, the number of optical alignment points is signific antly reduced and the assembly costs of the module is decreased compar ed to those of hybrid modules, that use silica waveguides. Moreover, b y using selective MOVPE, extremely low-loss buried heterostructure wav eguides can be fabricated without any etching. In-plane bandgap energy control is also possible, allowing the formation of active and passiv e core layers simultaneously without complicated fabrication. The tran sceiver PIC showed fiber-coupled output power of more than 1 mW and re ceiver bandwidth of 7 GHz. Modulation and detection operations at 500 Mb/s were also demonstrated. As a cost effective fabrication technique for monolithic PICs, bandgap energy controlled selective MOVPE is a p romising candidate.