Silicon Non-Volatile Optical Memory and All-Silicon Photonics

#photonic-integrated-circuits #silicon-photonics #memory #optical

SSCS and EDS would like to invite you to a virtual technical presentation on 15 May @ noon MT.

Silicon Non-Volatile Optical Memory and All-Silicon Photonics

Implementing on-chip non-volatile optical memories has long been an actively pursued goal, promising significant enhancements in the capability and energy efficiency of photonic integrated circuits. In this talk, we will represent an non-volatile optical memory exclusively using the most common semiconductor material, silicon. By manipulating the photon avalanche effect, we introduce a trapping effect at the silicon-silicon oxide interface, which in turn demonstrates a non-volatile reprogrammable optical memory cell with a record-high 4-bit encoding, robust retention and endurance. This silicon avalanche-induced trapping memory provides a distinctively cost-efficient and high-reliability route to realize optical data storage in standard silicon foundry processes. We demonstrate its applications in trimming in optical interconnects and in-memory computing. Our in-memory computing test case reduces energy consumption by approximately 83% compared to conventional optical approaches.