Ultra-high electro-optic activity demonstrated in a silicon-organic hybrid modulator

By C. Kieninger, Y. Kutuvantavida, D. Elder, S. Wolf, H. Zwickel, M. Blaicher, J. Kemal, M. Lauermann, Sebastian Randel, Wolfgang Freude and 2 more. Optica, 2017

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Efficient electro-optic (EO) modulators crucially rely on advanced materials that exhibit strong electro-optic activity and that can be integrated into high-speed and efficient phase shifter structures. In this paper, we demonstrate ultra-high in-device EO figures of merit of up to n3r33=2300 pm/V achieved in a silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) using the EO chromophore JRD1. This is the highest material-related in-device EO figure of merit hitherto achieved in a high-speed modulator at any operating wavelength. The π-voltage of the 1.5-mm-long device amounts to 210 mV, leading to a voltage-length product of UπL=320 Vμm—the lowest value reported for MZM that are based on low-loss dielectric waveguides. The viability of the devices is demonstrated by generating high-quality on-off-keying signals at 40 Gbit/s with Q factors in excess of 8 at a drive voltage as low as 140 mVpp. We expect that efficient high-speed EO modulators will not only have a major impact in the field of optical communications, but will also open new avenues towards ultrafast photonic-electronic signal processing.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eaca22678aa86ed74b5da5fdde30efe0942e427b

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Taking silicon photonics modulators to a higher performance level: state-of-the-art and a review of new technologies (2021, background): “In contrast to the ferroelectrics discussed above, the Pockels effect in these organic electrooptic materials is mostly electronic in nature and can thus provide an ultra-fast response.(188,190,228,258) Organic electro-optic materials can be processed at room temperature using inexpensive solution-b”