High-speed silicon electrooptic Modulator design

Author

Gan, Fuwan ; Kärtner, Franz X.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

17

Issue

5

fYear

2005

fDate

5/1/2005 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1007

Lastpage

1009

Abstract

An electrically driven Mach-Zehnder waveguide modulator based on high-index contrast silicon split-ridge waveguide technology and electronic carrier injection is proposed. The excellent optical and carrier confinement possible in high-index contrast waveguide devices, together with good thermal heat sinking and forward biased operation, enables high-speed modulation with small signal modulation bandwidths beyond 20 GHz, a V_π times length figure of merit of V_πL=0.5 V·cm and an insertion loss of about 4 dB. The modulator can be fabricated in a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatible way.

Keywords

MIS structures; carrier lifetime; electro-optical modulation; elemental semiconductors; heat sinks; high-speed optical techniques; integrated optics; integrated optoelectronics; optical design techniques; optical fabrication; optical losses; optical waveguides; silicon; Si; carrier confinement; electrically driven Mach-Zehnder waveguide modulator; electronic carrier injection; high-speed silicon electrooptic modulator design; insertion loss; metal-oxide-semiconductor; signal modulation bandwidths; silicon split-ridge waveguide; thermal heat sinking; Bandwidth; Carrier confinement; Electrooptic modulators; Heat sinks; High speed optical techniques; Insertion loss; Optical devices; Optical modulation; Optical waveguides; Silicon; Electronic carrier injection; high-index contrast silicon (Si) waveguide; high-speed optical modulator;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2005.846756

Filename

1424082