Switching characteristics of nonbiased optical bistability in asymmetric Fabry-Perot S-SEEDs made of extremely shallow quantum well structures

The asymmetric Fabry-Perot (AFP) cavity structure extremely shallow quantum wells (ESQWs) symmetric self-electro-optic effect device (S-SEED) shows nonbiased optical bistability. We analytically investigated the switching characteristics of the AFP ESQWs S-SEED (AE-SEED) using an impulse photocurrent response function and the corresponding voltage transients of the two p-i(ESQWs)-n diodes in AE-SEED. The result was compared to the characteristics of the conventional anti-reflection coated ESQWs S-SEED (E-SEED) with external bias. The large optical field and the thin intrinsic region in AE-SEED reduce the required incident switching energy and operating voltage, respectively. According to our analysis, the switching energy of an impedance-matched AE-SEED is 1.2 fJ μm−2, while that of an E-SEED is 4.1 fJ μm−2. With a reasonable RC time constant and device size, the switching time of the AE-SEED is 11 ps while that of E-SEED is 12.4 ps for the minimum switching energy of each device.