We report the design, fabrication, and characterization of a universal silicon PN junction ring resonator for C band error-free communication links operated up to 50 Gb/s with co-designed optical modulation and detection performance. The universal p-n junction ring device shows co-designed detection responsivity up to 0.84 A/W, in conjunction with a modulation efficiency of ∼4V·mm and >8dB optical modulation extinction ratio, enabling C band 50 Gb/s NRZ communication link with a bit error rate ≤3×10-12. Individually, the speed of modulation and detection is measured up to 112 Gb/s and 80 Gb/s, respectively. The principle of co-designing the PN junction ring modulator and detector performance required for error-free communication links can significantly ease the fabrication yield challenges of ring structures by reducing the number of types of devices. The principle can also be applied to O band wavelengths. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, a device of this type has achieved both error-free modulation and detection operation up to 50 Gb/s in the C band individually or in conjugation as an error-free communication link, which paves the way to realize a >1.6Tb/s all-silicon WDM-based error-free optical transceiver link in the future and is essential for future programmable photonics circuits.

Silicon-based electro-optic modulators contribute to easing the integration of high-speed and low-power consumption circuits for classical optical communications and data computations. Beyond the plasma dispersion modulation, an alternative solution in silicon is to exploit the DC Kerr effect, which generates an equivalent linear electro-optical effect enabled by applying a large DC electric field. Although some theoretical and experimental studies have shown its existence in silicon, limited contributions relative to plasma dispersion have been achieved in high-speed modulation so far. This paper presents high-speed optical modulation based on the DC Kerr effect in silicon PIN waveguides. The contributions of both plasma dispersion and Kerr effects have been analyzed in different waveguide configurations, and we demonstrated that the Kerr induced modulation is dominant when a high external DC electric field is applied in PIN waveguides. High-speed optical modulation response is analyzed, and eye diagrams up to 80 Gbit/s in NRZ format are obtained under a d.c. voltage of 30 V. This work paves the way to exploit the Kerr effect to generate high-speed Pockels-like optical modulation.