We experimentally demonstrate a small-size and high-speed silicon optical switch based on the free carrier plasma dispersion in silicon. Using an embedded racetrack resonator with a quality factor of 7400, the optical switch shows an extinction ratio exceeding 13 dB with a footprint of only 2.2 × 10-3 mm^2. Moreover, a novel pre-emphasis technique is introduced to improve the optical response performance and the rise and the fall times are reduced down to 0.24 ns and 0.42 ns respectively, which are 25% and 44% lower than those without the pre-emphasis.
A high efficiency and broad bandwidth grating coupler between a silicon-on-insulator （SOI） nanophotonic waveguide and fibre is designed and fabricated. Coupling efficiencies of 46% and 25% at a wavelength of 1.55um are achieved by simulation and experiment, respectively. An optical 3 dB bandwidth of 45 mn from 1530 nm to 1575 nm is also obtained in experin, ent. Numerical calculation shows that a tolerance to fabrication error of 10 nm in etch depth is achievable. The measurement results indicate that the alignment error of 112 um results in less than 1 dB additional coupling loss.
A novel grating coupler with a stair-step blaze profile is proposed. The coupler is a CMOS process compatible device and can be used for light coupling in optical communication. The blaze profile can be optimized to obtain a high efficiency of 66.7% for the out-of-plane coupling at the centre wavelength of 1595 nm with a 1 dB bandwidth of 41 nm. Five key parameters of the stair-step blaze grating and their effects on the coupling are discussed for the application in L band telecommunication.
This paper investigated the design and the characterization of a photonic delay line based on passive cascaded silicon-on-insulator （SOI） microrings. We considered the compromise of group delay, bandwidth and insertion loss. A 3-stage double channel side-coupled integrated spaced sequence of resonator （SCISSOR） device was optimized by shifting the resonance of each microring and fabricated with electron beam lithography and dry etching. The group delay was measured to be 17 ps for non-return-to-zero signals at different bit rates and the bandwidth of 78 GHz was achieved. The experiment result agreed well with our simulation.
We demonstrate a sub-nanosecond electro-optical switch with low crosstalk in a silicon-on-insulator （SOI） dual-coupled micro-ring embedded with p-i-n diodes. A crosstalk of -23 dB is obtained in the 20-μm-radius micro-ring with the well-designing asymmetric dual-coupling structure. By optimizations of the doping profiles and the fabrication processes, the sub-nanosecond switch-on/off time of 〈400 ps is finally realized under an electrical pre-emphasized driving signal. This compact and fast-response micro-ring switch, which can be fabricated by complementary metal oxide semiconductor （CMOS） compatible technologies, have enormous potential in optical interconnects of multicore networks-on-chip.
A novel highly efficient grating coupler with large filling factor and deep etching is proposed in silicon-on-insulator for near vertical coupling between the rib waveguide and optical fibre. The deep slots acting as high efficient scattering centres are analysed and optimized. As high as 60% coupling efficiency at telecom wavelength of 1550-nm and 3-dB bandwidth of 61 nm are predicted by simulation. A peak coupling efficiency of 42.1% at wavelength 1546-nm and 3-dB bandwidth of 37.6 nm are obtained experimentally.
