A Compact and Low-Loss MMI Coupler Fabricated With CMOS Technology

Author

Sheng, Zhen ; Wang, Zhiqi ; Qiu, Chao ; Li, Le ; Pang, Albert ; Wu, Aimin ; Wang, Xi ; Zou, Shichang ; Gan, Fuwan

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. of Functional Mater. for Inf., Shanghai Inst. of Microsyst. & Inf. Technol., Shanghai, China

Volume

4

Issue

6

fYear

2012

Firstpage

2272

Lastpage

2277

Abstract

We present the design, fabrication, and measurement of a compact and low-loss multimode interference (MMI) coupler based on the silicon nanowire waveguide. The device is carefully designed to achieve both a good performance and a compact size by using the mode matching method. The device is fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) with 0.13-μm CMOS technology. By measuring the MMI coupler with a cascaded configuration, a very low excess loss of 0.06 dB at the wavelength of 1550 nm is obtained. The device can also work well for a wide wavelength band. The present MMI coupler is very compact with a footprint of ~ 3.6 × 11.5 μm² for the multimode region.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; elemental semiconductors; integrated optoelectronics; light interference; nanophotonics; nanowires; optical couplers; optical design techniques; optical fabrication; optical losses; optical waveguides; silicon; silicon-on-insulator; CMOS technology; SOI; Si; cascaded configuration; compact size; loss 0.06 dB; low excess loss; low-loss MMI coupler; mode matching method; multimode interference coupler; optical design; optical fabrication; silicon nanowire waveguide; silicon-on-insulator; size 0.13 mum; wavelength 1550 nm; wide wavelength band; Couplers; Fabrication; Loss measurement; Optical waveguides; Performance evaluation; Silicon; Wavelength measurement; Multimode interference (MMI) coupler; low loss; silicon photonics;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Journal, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1943-0655

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JPHOT.2012.2230320

Filename

6363508