High speed, low driving voltage vertical cavity germanium-silicon modulators for optical

Acknowledgements 
This work would not be possible without the support and encouragement from my 
advisor, professors, colleagues, friends, and my family.
First, I am very grateful to my PhD advisor, Professor James S. Harris (the Coach). 
He owns a great vision to foresee the promising research direction for the future 
technology development. His connections also help students to reach multiple research 
communities. And most important of all, the wonderful Harris group environment 
gives us freedom to study our own interests and helps nurturing self-motivated 
researchers.
I would like to thank Professor David A. B. Miller, who first investigated and 
demonstrated QCSE twenty-two years ago. He gave me insightful suggestions and 
inspired my thoughts during this project. He also gave me great and generous help 
with experiment coordination. 
I would like to thank Professor Theodore I. Kamins, the former principle scientist 
from HP and current consulting professor at Stanford. Ted has spent past several years 
to discuss with me and other members in our QD meeting. His expertise in device, 
electronics, and especially in SiGe epitaxy has provided me invaluable guidance into 
my research since the start of my PhD study. 
I would also like to thank them for being my oral and reading members. I am 
grateful to Professor Krishina Saraswat for chairing my oral committee. 
My gratitude also goes to all past and present members of the QD and modulator 
meeting. Yu-Hsuan Kuo, Yijie Huo and Yangsi Ge taught me everything about CVD 
growth, fabrication, and characterization from the very beginning stage. Angie Lin, 
Donghun Choi, Hopil Bae and Tomas Sarmiento also gave me many useful 
suggestions. Marco Fiorentino, Mike Tan Tomasz Ochalski and Lars Thylen Lars 
helped me with various high-speed optical test setups and measurements. 
My PhD life would not be so enjoyable without wonderful people in Harris group. 
I would like to thank Robert Chen, Tom O’Sullivan, Meredith Lee, Sonny Vo, Xiao 

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Hann Lim, Anjia Gu, Zhilong Rao, Tom Lee and all other students in Harris group for 
sharing their research experience.
I am also grateful to Gail Chun-Creech for her excellent administration of our big 
group, to Edris Mohammed, and Ian Young of Intel for discussions in meetings, and to 
DARPA and Intel for financial support of this research. My thanks also go to staff 
members in SNF and Ginzton labs for their effort in equipment maintenance and 
assistance in device fabrication and characterization. 
Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my family and loved ones.
This research and thesis were supported by the Interconnect Focus Center 
Research Program, part of the Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation 
(MARCO) and by the DARPA UNIC program. 

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