Ultracompact and Low-Power Plasmonic MZI Switch Using Cyclomer Loading

Author

Papaioannou, Sotirios ; Giannoulis, Giannis ; Vyrsokinos, Konstantinos ; Leroy, Floriane ; Zacharatos, Filimon ; Markey, Laurent ; Weeber, Jean-Claude ; Dereux, Alain ; Bozhevolnyi, Sergey I. ; Prinzen, Andreas ; Apostolopoulos, Dimitrios ; Avramopoulos,

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf., Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

Volume

27

Issue

9

fYear

2015

fDate

May1, 1 2015

Firstpage

963

Lastpage

966

Abstract

We present a 2 × 2 hybrid silicon-plasmonic thermooptic (TO) asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometric (MZI) switch having only 40-μm long active cyclomer-loaded plasmonic phase arms. It requires less than 12 mW of power and has 2/5-μs ON/OFF-times, respectively, a modulation depth higher than 90% and a 13.2-dB extinction ratio. Data traffic evaluation has been carried out using 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero streams, yielding error-free operation at both switching states with power penalties ranging between 1 to 4.8 dB. The use of the cyclomer loading having a higher TO coefficient than polymethyl methacrylate has resulted to the smallest footprint among plasmonic MZI TO switches reported so far.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; optical communication equipment; optical modulation; optical polymers; optical switches; plasmonics; thermo-optical devices; ON/OFF-times; TO coefficient; active cyclomer-loaded plasmonic phase arms; bit rate 10 Gbit/s; cyclomer loading; data traffic evaluation; error-free operation; extinction ratio; hybrid silicon-plasmonic thermooptic asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometric switch; low-power plasmonic MZI switch; modulation depth; nonreturn-to-zero streams; plasmonic MZI TO switches; polymethyl methacrylate; power 12 mW; power penalties; size 40 mum; switching states; time 2 mus to 5 mus; ultracompact plasmonic MZI switch; Adaptive optics; Bit error rate; Loading; Optical switches; Optimized production technology; Plasmons; Active plasmonics; dielectric-loaded surface plasmon polaritons; silicon-on-insulator; thermo-optic switch;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2015.2404942

Filename

7044593