Low Loss Fiber-to-Waveguide Converter With a 3-D Functional Taper for Silicon Photonics

We demonstrate a low-loss and broad-bandwidth fiber-to-waveguide converter with a 3-D functional SiO2 taper for silicon photonics. The converter is composed of a cantilevered SiO2 waveguide and Si nano-tapers. In order to reduce the loss from the cleaved fiber, a 3-D functional SiO2 taper is designed to compress the size of optical mode field. Using cleaved optical fibers with a mode field diameter of 10.5 μm at 1550 nm, we characterized the optical performances of the converter. With an index-matching liquid, the lowest coupling loss of TE mode is 1.5 dB/facet and the lowest coupling loss of TM mode is 2.1 dB/facet. For both TE and TM modes, the 1-dB bandwidth is more than 100 nm, and the alignment tolerances for 1-dB excess loss are, respectively, ±2.5 and ±2 μm in horizontal and vertical directions.

[1]  Tymon Barwicz,et al.  An o-band metamaterial converter interfacing standard optical fibers to silicon nanophotonic waveguides , 2015, 2015 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC).

[2]  Siegfried Janz,et al.  Broadband polarization independent nanophotonic coupler for silicon waveguides with ultra-high efficiency. , 2015, Optics express.

[3]  P. Verheyen,et al.  -1 V bias 67 GHz bandwidth Si-contacted germanium waveguide p-i-n photodetector for optical links at 56 Gbps and beyond. , 2016, Optics express.

[4]  C. Doerr,et al.  Low-Loss and Broadband Cantilever Couplers Between Standard Cleaved Fibers and High-Index-Contrast Si $_{3}$N $_{4}$ or Si Waveguides , 2010, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[5]  High-speed silicon Mach-Zehnder optical modulator with large optical bandwidth , 2013 .

[6]  Xianshu Luo,et al.  Mode-size converter with high coupling efficiency and broad bandwidth. , 2011, Optics express.

[7]  Lawrence R. Chen,et al.  Low crosstalk Bragg grating/Mach-Zehnder interferometer optical add-drop multiplexer in silicon photonics. , 2015, Optics express.

[8]  Dan Song,et al.  A Fully Integrated 4 $\times$ 10-Gb/s DWDM Optoelectronic Transceiver Implemented in a Standard 0.13 $\mu{\hbox {m}}$ CMOS SOI Technology , 2006, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[9]  Tsuyoshi Horikawa,et al.  Dual-Tapered 10-µm-Spot-Size Converter with Double Core for Coupling Polarization-Independent Silicon Rib Waveguides to Single-Mode Optical Fibers , 2012 .

[10]  D. Kucharski,et al.  A Fully Integrated 20-Gb/s Optoelectronic Transceiver Implemented in a Standard 0.13- $\mu{\hbox {m}}$ CMOS SOI Technology , 2006, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[11]  Ultranarrow Silicon Inverse Taper Waveguide Fabricated with Double-Patterning Photolithography for Low-Loss Spot-Size Converter , 2012 .

[12]  P. Verheyen,et al.  High-efficiency fiber-to-chip grating couplers realized using an advanced CMOS-compatible silicon-on-insulator platform. , 2010, Optics express.

[13]  Dim-Lee Kwong,et al.  Suspended optical fiber-to-waveguide mode size converter for silicon photonics. , 2010, Optics express.

[14]  C. Latrasse,et al.  Novel spot-size converter for optical fiber to sub-μm silicon waveguide coupling with low loss, low wavelength dependence and high tolerance to alignment , 2015, 2015 European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC).

[15]  D. Van Thourhout,et al.  Compact Wavelength-Selective Functions in Silicon-on-Insulator Photonic Wires , 2006, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[16]  J. Fédéli,et al.  Low-Loss ($<$ 1 dB) and Polarization-Insensitive Edge Fiber Couplers Fabricated on 200-mm Silicon-on-Insulator Wafers , 2010, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[17]  D. Marris-Morini,et al.  Light injection in SOI microwaveguides using high-efficiency grating couplers , 2006, Journal of Lightwave Technology.