CMOS optoelectronic components for clock distribution

Optoelectronic components for clock distribution that are fully compatible with all standard CMOS processes are described. Waveguide cores are silicon nitride, while the waveguide cladding is silicon dioxide. Polysilicon photodetectors offer responsivities up to 1.3 A/W, 10–90% rise time of 0.58 ns, and full-width half-max duration of 0.85 ns. Power budget calculations indicate that 1 μA of photocurrent from the end node detectors can be achieved with only 48 μW of optical power input into a 16-node H-tree.