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Ultracompact (3 ?m) silicon slow-light optical modulator.


ABSTRACT: Wavelength-scale optical modulators are essential building blocks for future on-chip optical interconnects. Any modulator design is a trade-off between bandwidth, size and fabrication complexity, size being particularly important as it determines capacitance and actuation energy. Here, we demonstrate an interesting alternative that is only 3 ?m long, only uses silicon on insulator (SOI) material and accommodates several nanometres of optical bandwidth at 1550 nm. The device is based on a photonic crystal waveguide: by combining the refractive index shift with slow-light enhanced absorption induced by free-carrier injection, we achieve an operation bandwidth that significantly exceeds the shift of the bandedge. We compare a 3 ?m and an 80 ?m long modulator and surprisingly, the shorter device outperforms the longer one. Despite its small size, the device achieves an optical bandwidth as broad as 7 nm for an extinction ratio of 10 dB, and modulation times ranging between 500 ps and 100 ps.

SUBMITTER: Opheij A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3866636 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Ultracompact (3 μm) silicon slow-light optical modulator.

Opheij Aron A   Rotenberg Nir N   Beggs Daryl M DM   Rey Isabella H IH   Krauss Thomas F TF   Kuipers L L  

Scientific reports 20131218


Wavelength-scale optical modulators are essential building blocks for future on-chip optical interconnects. Any modulator design is a trade-off between bandwidth, size and fabrication complexity, size being particularly important as it determines capacitance and actuation energy. Here, we demonstrate an interesting alternative that is only 3 μm long, only uses silicon on insulator (SOI) material and accommodates several nanometres of optical bandwidth at 1550 nm. The device is based on a photoni  ...[more]

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