0.2 V Drive Voltage Substrate Removed Electro-Optic Mach–Zehnder Modulators With MQW Cores at 1.55 μm

Author

Dogru, Selim ; Dagli, Nadir

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Volume

32

Issue

3

fYear

2014

fDate

Feb.1, 2014

Firstpage

435

Lastpage

439

Abstract

Novel electro-optic modulators in compound semiconductor epilayers using substrate removal techniques are reported. Epilayer consists of a p-i-n junction in which i layer is composed of an InGaAlAs/InAlAs MQW. This creates an optical mode with very strong vertical confinement and overlapping very well with the large electric field of the reverse biased p-i-n junction. This approach combined with the large quadratic electro-optic coefficient due to MQW improves efficiency of modulation significantly. Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulators fabricated using this approach has 0.2 V (0.6 V) V_π for 3 (1) mm long electrodes at 1.55 μm under push pull drive corresponding to record modulation efficiency of 0.06 V·cm.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; electro-optical modulation; gallium compounds; indium compounds; optical fabrication; p-i-n diodes; semiconductor epitaxial layers; semiconductor quantum wells; InGaAlAs-InAlAs; MQW cores; compound semiconductor epilayers; electric field; electro-optic Mach-Zehnder modulators; optical mode; push pull drive; quadratic electro-optic coefficient; reverse biased p-i-n junction; substrate removal techniques; vertical confinement; vertical overlapping; voltage 0.2 V; wavelength 1.55 mum; Electrodes; Electrooptic modulators; Indexes; Optical device fabrication; Quantum well devices; Substrates; Compound semiconductor modulators; integrated optics; optical modulators;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2013.2293345

Filename

6677589