Broadband silicon bridge waveguide polarization beam splitter

We have successfully fabricated and measured our silicon bridge waveguide polarization beam splitter (PBS). Our proposed PBS is based on a bend directional coupler with a bend bridge waveguide and is experimentally realized using silicon waveguide thickness of 220 nm and 250 nm, which are the commonly used silicon thickness for silicon photonics manufacturing. Our experimental results demonstrated high extinction ratio of > 20 dB for the TE-like mode, and > 15 dB for the TM-like mode across a broad bandwidth of 90 nm that covers the entire C-band with a small footprint of ~18×9 μm2. On-chip high performance PBS is important for polarization diversity in integrated photonics, and for communication applications such as dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) modulation.