Membrane InP saturable absorbers on silicon as building blocks for transparent optical networks

As silicon photonics continues to gain research and industrial relevance, some of the building blocks in this technology such as modulators and switches still suffer from limitation when it comes to insertion losses and/or extinction ratio. In the past two years we have been investigating a promising new building block for silicon on insulator (SOI) circuits which is based on ultra-thin narrow stripes of InP bonded on top of SOI, which operate as saturable absorbers at very low optical power levels. The unique properties of these membrane InP switches (MIPS) make them ideally suitable as complementary components to SOI devices. By controlling the band gap of the active layers in the membrane as well as the confinement of light critical properties of such MIPS can be determined and tailored to specific applications. In this talk we will highlight two exciting applications of MIPS on SOI. First we will show how they enhance the performance of silicon based modulators by regenerating the signal through their non-linear response. Secondly we will show how they may solve a unique engineering challenge for next generation access networks by operating as optically controlled switches with high extinction ratio and no electrical power supply.