Compact Thermo-Optic Switch Based on Tapered W1 Photonic Crystal Waveguide

Author

Qiang Zhao ; Kaiyu Cui ; Zhilei Huang ; Xue Feng ; Dengke Zhang ; Fang Liu ; Wei Zhang ; Yidong Huang

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. Eng., Tsinghua Univ., Beijing, China

Volume

5

Issue

2

fYear

2013

fDate

Apr-13

Firstpage

2200606

Lastpage

2200606

Abstract

A compact thermo-optic switch based on the cutoff effect of slow-light mode of a tapered W1 photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) is demonstrated with an integrated microheater. Due to the low-group-index taper, the coupling loss of the slow-light PCW is reduced, and a high switching extinction ratio (ER) is attained. Moreover, three types of microheaters are evaluated for the power consumptions, heating transfer efficiency, and temperature uniformities, and an optimized slab microheater is utilized. As a result, low switching power of 8.9 mW and high ER of 23.5 dB are achieved experimentally, while the length of W1 PCW is only 16.8 μm.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; integrated optics; integrated optoelectronics; nanophotonics; optical couplers; optical losses; optical switches; optical waveguides; photonic crystals; silicon; slow light; thermo-optical devices; PCW; Si; compact thermooptic switch; coupling loss; extinction ratio; heating transfer efficiency; low-group-index taper; power consumptions; slab microheater; slow-light mode cutoff effect; tapered W1 photonic crystal waveguide; temperature uniformities; Erbium; Heat transfer; Optical switches; Optical waveguides; Photonic crystals; Silicon; Photonic crystals; optical interconnects; silicon nanophotonics;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Journal, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1943-0655

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JPHOT.2013.2247993

Filename

6466349