Reconfigurable electro-optical directed-logic circuit using carrier-depletion micro-ring resonators

Here we demonstrate a reconfigurable electro-optical directed-logic circuit based on a regular array of integrated optical switches. Each 1 x 1 optical switch consists of a micro-ring resonator with an embedded lateral p-n junction and a micro-heater. We achieve high-speed on-off switching by applying electrical logic signals to the p-n junction. We can configure the operation mode of each switch by thermal tuning the resonance wavelength. The result is an integrated optical circuit that can be reconfigured to perform any combinational logic operation. As a proof-of-principle, we fabricated a multi-spectral directed-logic circuit based on a fourfold array of switches and showed that this circuit can be reconfigured to perform arbitrary two-input logic functions with speeds up to 3 GB/s. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America