50-GHz integrated interconnects in silicon optical microbench technology

A custom-designed silicon-based 50-GHz interconnect is integrated for packaging demonstrations of broadband optoelectronic (OE) applications in silicon optical microbench technology. The half-shielded (or partially shielded) 0.5-cm interconnect has 25-dB isolation and 0.9-dB transmission loss over 50 GHz. When implemented in this packaged architecture, the nature of the interconnect minimizes coupling and eliminates the need for an external test fixture that is prevalent in a more conventional approach. The interconnect is further demonstrated in a multiport electrical package to illustrate the potential of this architecture up to 40-Gb data rates, and the resulting package has insertion loss less than 5 dB at 50 GHz.