MC3.

2 (Invited) 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Miniaturised and low power switches and modulators based on slow light photonic crystal waveguides
Thomas F Krauss, Liam OFaolain,
School of Physics and Astronomy SUPA, University of St Andrews Scotland, UK Abstract. The slow light approach offers significant size reductions for switches and modulators, thus offering small footprint and low power operation, while maintaining sufficient bandwidth for accomodating high data rates and ensuring sufficent tolerances. I. INTRODUCTION Optical switches and modulators are key components for next generation communications technologies, especially for the realisation of optical interconnects in massively parallel multiple-core computer-chips and datacentres. Cheap, reliable and compact on-chip optical switches and modulators are key prerequisites for these technologies. These should be CMOS compatible and thus be based on silicon technology. In silicon, the main electro-optic effect available is the plasma effect, which is relatively weak; switches tend to be either very long or require high powers to operate, or both. The use of resonant enhancement is one means of addressing this issue and increasing the sensitivity of light to the small changes in refractive index available. However, the resonant approach, realised e.g. in cavities [1], tends to strongly limit the bandwidth of the device and makes it very sensitive to fabrication imperfections as well as thermal fluctuations. Switching typically requires a phase change between two optical modes, i.e. kL = , where L is the switching length and k is the difference in propagation constant between the two paths or modes. To reduce L, it is therefore desirable to design a device in which the k is large, even for small refractive index changes. This is exactly what a slow-light region provides. Slow light is also a resonant enhancement effect, but offers more bandwidth as a slow light waveguide can be considered an open single mode cavity [2]. We have already demonstrated modulators of sub-100 m length with a group index of ng30 [3], but further slow light engineering is possible and will allow us to push realistic group indices to ng100, thus reducing the practical length to 20-30 m, while maintaining an insertion loss of as low as 1 dB. The second type of miniaturised device, a directional coupler switch, is based on two closely-spaced photonic crystal waveguides in a directional coupler (DC) geometry (fig. 2) [4]. This device can be as short as 5 m with a bandwidth of 1 nm. We have recently demonstrated switching times as short as 3 ps [5], the time not being limited by the time-of-ight of the pulse (which has a sub-ps timescale), but by the bandwidth of the device, thus highlighting that the slow light approach offers sufficient bandwidth even for extremely high bandwidth applications.

Figure 1. Photonic crystal Mach-Zehnder modulator. (a) Micrograph of the finished device. The 80 m short PhC phase-shifters can be seen in each arm of the MZI, together with thermal heating pads used for proofof-principle demonstration. b) SEM of a cross-section through the PhC phase-shifters. The silicon guiding layer is covered with an oxide cladding, which is filling the holes. (c) A close-up of the PhC waveguide, highlighting the shift of the first two rows of holes adjacent to the waveguide, which is used to engineer the dispersion (d) Perspective overview of the device.

II. Conclusion In conclusion, slow light and the strong dispersion engineering available in photonic crystal waveguides provides an opportunity for realising optical switches and modulators that are compatible with CMOS electronics, both in terms of footprint (m-size) and in terms of switching power (fJ/bit). Furthermore, this approach provides more bandwidth than resonant cavities of comparable size, bandwidth not only being important for high data rates but also for accommodating thermal and technological fluctuations. In order to reduce sizes and to increase light-matter interaction further, novel geometries involving plasmonic structures may also be useful; plasmonic-type resonators on their own have already been demonstrated [6, 7], but these tend to feature either low

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extinction ratios or high insertion losses, or both. A suitable combination of photonic crystal and plasmonic technologies may hit the sweet-spot for low power operation ultracompact modulators.

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Q. Xu, B. Schmidt, S. Pradham and M. Lipson, Micrometre-scale silicon electro-optic modulator, Nature 435, 325-327 (2005). T. F. Krauss, Slow light in photonic crystal waveguides, Journal Of Physics D-applied Physics, 40 (9), 2666-2670 (2007). L. OFaolain, D. M. Beggs, T. P. White, T. Kampfrath, L. Kuipers and T. F. Krauss, Compact Optical Switches and Modulators Based on Dispersion Engineered Photonic Crystals, IEEE Photonics Journal 2 (3) 404-414 (2010). D.M. Beggs, T. P. White, L. OFaolain and T. F. Krauss, Ultracompact and low power optical switch based on silicon photonic crystals, Opt. Letters 33 (2) 147 (2008). T. Kampfrath, D. M. Beggs, T. P. White, M. Burresi, D. van Oosten, T. F. Krauss and L. Kuipers, Ultrafast re-routing of light via slow modes in a nano-photonic directional coupler, Appl. Phys. Lett., 94 (24) 241119 (2009). J. A. Dionne, K. Diest, L. A. Sweatlock and H. A. Atwater, PlasMOStor: A Metal-Oxide-Si Field Effect Plasmonic Modulator, Nanoletters 9, 897-902 (2009). W. Cai, J. S. White and M. L. Brongersma, Compact, High-Speed and Power-Efcient Electrooptic Plasmonic Modulators, Nanoletters 9, pp.4403-4411 (2009).

Figure 2. (a-c) Scanning electron micrographs of the directional coupler switch. (a) The switch design uses two closely-spaced PhC waveguides in a directional-coupler geometry. Scale bar 1um. (b) Close-up of holes in the PhC. Scale bar 300nm. (c) Overview of the chip layout. S-bends are used to separate the access waveguides. Scale bar 10um. (d) Cross-section through the PhC switch after silica infilling. Scale bar 1um.

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