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Silicon photonics is a promising technology that can pro vide large communication bandwidth, low latency and low power consumption for inter-chip and intra-chip optical inter connects or links. A key component for use in inter-chip and intra-chip optical interconnects is a modulator that can be monolithically integrated into the same silicon layer as tran sistors and other optical components. Some approaches for implementing silicon-photonic modulators are based on germanium, which is an efficient absorbing material at infrared wavelengths that include a 1.5 um band for electro-absorptive modulator applications. For example, for high-performance transistors, a silicon layer can either be strained by the addition of germanium layers or used as a direct, mobility-enhanced silicon-germanium layer. Consequently, there is considerable interest in integrating alloys of germanium on silicon from both an optical and an …