Implementation of on-chip optical interconnect in high speed digital circuit: Two-stage CMOS buffer

Background: Silicon based photonics has created strong interested in recent years, mainly in optical waveguide interconnects for microelectronic circuits. Materials and Methods: This study reports on the implementation of an Optical Interconnect (OI) waveguide in a digital electronic circuit, a two-stage CMOS buffer. To compare the performance between several waveguide materials with copper interconnect, the optical waveguide was designed and evaluated in OptiBPM to be in a single mode condition. Then, the OI link was simulated in OptiSPICE and their ability as an interconnection was tested in a two-stage CMOS buffer. A propagation delay performance for the whole circuit and for the interconnection only was measured using different material of interconnect. Results: The results showed that the OI minimized the propagation delay in the two-stage CMOS buffer circuit, as well as increased the speed of the integrated circuit. Conclusion: The proposed SOI-based optical waveguide in OI link are able to replace copper based electrical interconnection in electronic circuit technology.