Integration of a RTD with an optical waveguide to form a high speed electroabsorption modulator

We present recent progress in the performance of a high speed electroabsorption modulator based on the integration of a resonant tunnelling diode (RTD) with an optical waveguide based on the GaAs-AlGaAs system. This integration of an RTD within an optical waveguide introduces high nonlinearities into the electrical characteristics of the waveguide by inducing large electric field changes on the collector region which give rise to a band-edge shift via the Franz-Keldysh effect that can be used for electroabsorption modulation up to millimeter-wave frequencies of light at photon energies close to the bandgap energy of the semiconductor, in this case around 900 nm