HERMES: High dEnsity silicon geRManium intEgrated photonicS

HERMES is aimed at realising a Ge and GeSi material platform that will be aimed primarily at sustaining optical interconnect circuits to meet the density, data rate and power consumption requirements for the continuation of Moore's law beyond 2020. The ITRS roadmap shows a saturation of the number of electrical pins required for input/output on microprocessors beyond 2020 to about 3000 with current technology. This saturation with an ever increasing latency and a limited on-chip clock speed is a bottle neck that high density optical interconnects have to alleviate. To meet the ITRS 2020 goals the target is clear, with over 100 Tb/s off chip IO capability and power consumption for an entire optical link on the order of 100fJ/bit. This work proposes a solution to this problem and provides a novel means of fabrication to go beyond the capabilities of standard planar silicon photonics circuits. To do so we aim to develop a multilayer optical platform based on localised Germanium/Silicon compounds on insulator compatible with the fabrication of micrometre sized cavity based structures enabling devices such as modulators and detectors. The growth of laser sources based on III/V materials or doped Germanium could also be envisioned but this is beyond the scope of this proposal. The proposed platform will establish a means to fabricate and demonstrate micrometre scale optical devices fit to tackle the 3 dimensional, high density, low voltage and low capacitance requirements needed for very large scale optical integration necessary for optical on chip interconnects.