Design and simulation of 2 × 2 MMI coupler and thermo-optic switch using sol-gel derived organic-inorganic hybrid material

The utilization of optical as a medium to transmit signal had became major concern on telecommunication field due to many advantages on the performance and cost. The flexibility and reconfugaribility of photonic integrated circuit (PIC) lead the improvement on optical network where modern wavelength demultiplexing (WDM) system require signal routing and coupling devices have large optical bandwidth and polarization insensitive. The employment of Multimode Interference (MMI) effects in integrated optic is quite suitable since they offer small size, robustness, good power balance, low polarization sensitivity, low insertion loss and ease of fabrication. Topical developments have resulted in a number of different structures that enable the range of achievable circuit functions to be extended. This paper investigates a new technique that can eliminate the crosstalk when the switch is on without using Variable Optical Attenuator (VOA) which can reduce the output power. A thermo-optic switch based on multimode interference (MMI) coupler is demonstrated. The device is designed and simulated using BeamProp from Rsoft and 3D BPM CAD software.