Electro-optical modulator using silicon on insulator Michelson interferometer with electro-optical polymer

Electro-optical modulator is a key component in data-communication, telecommunication and optical interconnects. In this paper we propose a novel electro-optical modulator design that utilizes Michelson Interferometer based on the widespread Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology with 220nm thickness of the silicon device layer. The proposed modulator is working at the telecommunication wavelength 1550nm. Due to its high Pockels coefficient and CMOS compatibility electro-optical polymer (EOP) is used as an active material where its refractive index changes with the applied electric field. The Michelson Interferometer consist of directional couplers which are used in splitting and combining the input power to and from the interferometer arms with 50/50 ratio at 1550nm. Slot waveguide with EOP clad is used in the interferometer arms to achieve high optical field confinement in the EOP which maximizes the mode effective index change of the interferometer arms when applying voltage. Finite Difference Eigen mode (FDE) solver was used to calculate the mode field profiles, effective index and loss of the slot waveguide. By optimizing the waveguide dimensions, we have achieved a waveguide sensitivity Swg=dneff/dnEOP of 0.9135 at 1550nm. Three-dimensional finite-difference-time-domain (3D-FDTD) method was used in the analysis and optimization of our Michelson Interferometer electro-optical modulator. Results show that our Michelson Interferometer modulator exhibit lower VπLπ product than previously published SOI based modulators. Moreover, the modulator exhibit low insertion loss (IL) leading to high extinction ratio (ER) in addition to its CMOS compatibility. Thus, our proposed modulator allows for compact, high performance and low cost modulators.

[1]  D. Thomson,et al.  50-Gb/s Silicon Optical Modulator , 2012, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[2]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Ultra wideband integrated polarization splitter/combiner using electro-optic effect in GaAs , 2011, OPTO.

[3]  R. C. Williamson,et al.  Sensitivity-bandwidth product for electro-optic modulators. , 2001, Optics letters.

[4]  Anthony L Lentine,et al.  Vertical junction silicon microdisk modulators and switches. , 2011, Optics express.

[5]  Jorge Rodríguez-Asomoza,et al.  Electro-optic E-field sensor using an optical modulator , 2004, 14th International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers, 2004. CONIELECOMP 2004..

[6]  E P Ippen,et al.  CMOS-compatible dual-output silicon modulator for analog signal processing. , 2008, Optics express.

[7]  P ? ? ? ? ? ? ? % ? ? ? ? , 1991 .

[8]  E.L. Wooten,et al.  A review of lithium niobate modulators for fiber-optic communications systems , 2000, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[9]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  High-performance optical modulator using ultra-thin silicon waveguide in SOI technology , 2018, OPTO.

[10]  H. Okayama,et al.  25-Gbps operation of silicon p-i-n Mach-Zehnder optical modulator with 100-μm-long phase shifter , 2012, 2012 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO).

[11]  F Y Gardes,et al.  High-contrast 40 Gb/s operation of a 500 μm long silicon carrier-depletion slow wave modulator. , 2012, Optics letters.

[12]  Dimitrios C. Zografopoulos,et al.  Hybrid Plasmonic Modulators and Filters Based on Electromagnetically Induced Transparency , 2016, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[13]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Semi-analytical design methodology for large scale metal–insulator–metal waveguide networks , 2014 .

[14]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Hybrid electro-optic plasmonic modulators based on directional coupler switches , 2016 .

[15]  Ray T. Chen,et al.  Polymer-Based Hybrid-Integrated Photonic Devices for Silicon On-Chip Modulation and Board-Level Optical Interconnects , 2013, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[16]  J. Leuthold,et al.  Low Power Mach–Zehnder Modulator in Silicon-Organic Hybrid Technology , 2013, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[17]  G. Gutierrez,et al.  Design of a 10 GHz silicon modulator based on a 0.25 μm CMOS process: a silicon photonic approach , 2006, SPIE OPTO.

[18]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  High-speed hybrid plasmonic electro-optical absorption modulator exploiting epsilon-near-zero effect in indium-tin-oxide , 2018, Journal of Nanophotonics.

[19]  W. Marsden.  I and J , 2012 .

[20]  N. Dagli,et al.  0.3V drive voltage GaAs∕AlGaAs substrate removed Mach–Zehnder intensity modulators , 2008 .

[21]  Xuezhe Zheng,et al.  Low Vpp, ultralow-energy, compact, high-speed silicon electro-optic modulator. , 2009, Optics express.

[22]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Low power compact hybrid plasmonic double microring electro-optical modulator , 2016, SPIE OPTO.

[23]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  All-silicon transparent conducting oxide-integrated electro-optical modulator , 2018, OPTO.

[24]  Philippe Lyan,et al.  Low loss and high speed silicon optical modulator based on a lateral carrier depletion structure. , 2008, Optics express.

[25]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Compact Silicon Electro-Optical Modulator Using Hybrid ITO Tri-Coupled Waveguides , 2018, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[26]  D Hillerkuss,et al.  42.7 Gbit/s electro-optic modulator in silicon technology. , 2011, Optics express.

[27]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Hybrid plasmonic electro-optical modulator , 2016 .

[28]  David J. Thomson,et al.  Silicon optical modulators , 2010 .

[29]  Mario Miscuglio,et al.  Impact of the process parameters to the optical and electrical properties of RF sputtered Indium Thin Oxide films: a holistic approach , 2018 .

[30]  Kapil Debnath,et al.  Cascaded modulator architecture for WDM applications. , 2012, Optics express.

[31]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Dynamic optical control of silicon nanoparticle scattering in the near and mid-IR , 2017, OPTO.

[32]  Guo-Qiang Lo,et al.  Ultralow drive voltage silicon traveling-wave modulator. , 2012, Optics express.

[33]  Jingdong Luo,et al.  Tailored Organic Electro-optic Materials and Their Hybrid Systems for Device Applications† , 2011 .

[34]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Electro-Optic Plasmonic Modulator With Direct Coupling to Silicon Waveguides , 2017, IEEE Photonics Journal.

[35]  Y. Ismail,et al.  Graphene plasmonic electro-absorption modulator , 2016, 2016 Photonics North (PN).

[36]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Nonlinear tuning techniques of plasmonic nano-filters , 2015 .

[37]  M. Swillam,et al.  Vertical Silicon Nanowires Based Directional Coupler Optical Router , 2018, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[38]  Gary E. Betts,et al.  Linearized modulator for suboctave-bandpass optical analog links , 1994 .

[39]  R. Soref,et al.  All-silicon active and passive guided-wave components for λ = 1.3 and 1.6 µm , 1986 .

[40]  Larry R. Dalton,et al.  Demonstration of a photonically controlled RF phase shifter , 1999 .

[41]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Low power hybrid plasmonic microring-on-disks electro-optical modulators , 2017 .

[42]  P. Cochat,et al.  Et al , 2008, Archives de pediatrie : organe officiel de la Societe francaise de pediatrie.

[43]  Qianfan Xu,et al.  Guiding and confining light in void nanostructure. , 2004, Optics letters.

[44]  L. Sekaric,et al.  Ultra-compact, low RF power, 10 Gb/s silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator. , 2007, Optics express.

[45]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Silicon slot waveguide dispersion analysis and engineering through dynamic excess carrier generation , 2018, OPTO.

[46]  M. Swillam,et al.  High performance silicon Mach-Zehnder interferometer based photonic modulator , 2017, 2017 International Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Symposium - Italy (ACES).

[47]  David A B Miller,et al.  Optical modulator on silicon employing germanium quantum wells. , 2007, Optics express.

[48]  H Hazura,et al.  On the modulation phase efficiency of a silicon p-i-n diode optical modulator , 2010, International Conference On Photonics 2010.

[49]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Electro-optic modulators based on hybrid plasmonic micro-ring-disk resonators with femtojoule switching energy , 2016 .

[50]  R. Alferness.  Waveguide Electrooptic Modulators , 1982 .

[51]  D. B. Mortimore,et al.  Fiber loop reflectors , 1988 .

[52]  Min-Cheol Oh,et al.  Recent advances in electrooptic polymer modulators incorporating highly nonlinear chromophore , 2001 .

[53]  R. Soref,et al.  Electrooptical effects in silicon , 1987 .

[54]  Mohamed A. Swillam,et al.  Silicon plasmonic microring modulator using embedded conducting oxides , 2017, OPTO.