Thermal performance of photonic crystal waveguiding devices based on GaInNAs/GaInAs quantum-wells

The temperature performance of GaInNAs-GaInAs multi-quantum-well active ridge waveguides, patterned with a periodic one-dimensional grating and a defective region placed in the central layer, has been evaluated to design efficient optical active switches/modulators at the operation wavelength λ= 1.289 μm. At environmental temperature T = 298 K, by properly designing the periodic grating and changing the injected current from I_OFF = 0 to I_ON = 11 mA, efficient switching characteristics occur in terms of crosstalk, contrast ratio, modulation depth and bandwidth. The proposed modulator preserves these high switching performances even over a wide temperature range. As an example, in the ON state we have verified that the transmittance T_ON assumes values within the range 3.2-3.6 for temperature values ranging from T = 298 K to T = 320 K, whereas T_ON reduces to about 2.0 by increasing the temperature up to T = 400 K. Moreover, the full width at half maximum increases from FWHM ≅ 0.91 nm for T = 298 K to FWHM = 1.15 nm for T = 400 K.