ABSTRACT
A monolithically integrated eight-channel optical multiplexer (Mux) with a 400 GHz channel spacing ~1550 nm is presented based on a silicon-on-insulator rib waveguide and an asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer. All channels were optimized independently with integrated heaters. The fully tuned Mux shows an adjacent channel isolation of ~13 dB, an excess loss of ~2.6 dB, and a channel uniformity of ~1.5 dB over a 25 nm wavelength span. In addition, the phase tuning efficiency for different interlevel dielectric layer thicknesses and thermal crosstalk were investigated.
ABSTRACT
We present a high-speed and highly scalable silicon optical modulator based on the free carrier plasma dispersion effect. The fast refractive index modulation of the device is due to electric-field-induced carrier depletion in a Silicon-on-Insulator waveguide containing a reverse biased pn junction. To achieve high-speed performance, a travelling-wave design is used to allow co-propagation of electrical and optical signals along the waveguide. We demonstrate high-frequency modulator optical response with 3 dB bandwidth of ~20 GHz and data transmission up to 30 Gb/s. Such high-speed data transmission capability will enable silicon modulators to be one of the key building blocks for integrated silicon photonic chips for next generation communication networks as well as future high performance computing applications.
