Sub-Volt Silicon-Organic Electro-optic Modulator With 500 MHz Bandwidth

Author

Ding, Ran ; Baehr-Jones, Tom ; Kim, Woo-Joong ; Spott, Alexander ; Fournier, Maryse ; Fedeli, Jean-Marc ; Huang, Su ; Luo, Jingdong ; Jen, Alex K.-Y. ; Dalton, Larry ; Hochberg, Michael

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Volume

29

Issue

8

fYear

2011

fDate

4/15/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1112

Lastpage

1117

Abstract

Lowering the operating voltage of electro-optic modulators is desirable for a variety of applications, most notably in analog photonics and digital data communication. In particular for digital systems such as CPUs, it is desirable to develop modulators that are both temperature-insensitive and compatible with typically sub-2 V CMOS electronics; however, drive voltages in silicon-based Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) currently exceed 1.8 V. Here, we show an MZI modulator based on an electro-optic polymer-clad silicon slot waveguide, with a halfwave voltage of only 0.69 V (corresponding to a 0.62 V(·)cm modulation figure of merit), and a bandwidth of 500 MHz. We also show that there are paths to significantly improve both the bandwidth and drive voltage.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; claddings; electro-optical modulation; elemental semiconductors; optical waveguides; polymers; silicon; Mach-Zehnder interferometers; Si; bandwidth 500 MHz; electro-optic polymer-clad silicon slot waveguide; silicon organic electro-optic modulator; voltage 0.69 V; Bandwidth; Electrooptical waveguides; Modulation; Optical losses; Polymers; Silicon; Electro-optic modulation; integrated optics; optical polymers; silicon-on-insulator technology;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2011.2122244

Filename

5722965