Contents
Optical Design and Integration of Polymeric EO Modulator with Laser Diode
Pamidighantam. V. Ramana1, K. Sudharsanam1, S. Pethkar1, Xie Ling1 and S. Mhaisalkar2
1 Institute of Microelectronics, 11 Science park road, Singapore 117685
2Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Phone: +65 67705921 Fax: +65 67745747, email: pvramana@ime.a-star.edu.sg
Abstract
Optical communications networks utilize directly
modulated semiconductor lasers at low and medium data
speeds upto 2.5 Gbps. As the transmission data rate
increases to and beyond 10Gbps, these networks employ
external modulators coupled to semiconductor lasers
through discrete optical isolators to prevent back reflections.
A number of solutions have been proposed to integrate
lasers with modulators to achieve optical integration.
Optical integration offers advantages in terms of
performance improvement, reduction in size and packaging
cost. Although active elements such as lasers and
modulators could be integrated on a single substrate, such a
system is prone to high frequency chirp and relaxation
oscillations caused by external optical reflections reaching
laser. Thus, the designer need to analyze the reflections
coupled back into the laser causing the chirp and the
forward propagation through simultaneous simulation.
Semiconductor lasers also exhibit large temperature
coefficient of wavelength of the order of 0.1nm/°C. Since,
the external quantum efficiency is quite low, these devices
generate large amount of heat and efficient thermal solutions
are needed to maintain the junction temperature and
wavelength.
In the present paper, we propose functional integration
of laser and modulator on a single substrate without
intermediate optical interconnects such as an isolator, fiber
or a waveguide. Modulation is achieved using a polymer
optical modulator. Different designs composed of strip
waveguide supporting single mode were studied for the
Gaussian elliptical beam propagation and optical
performance of the transceiver. The modulator design was
carried out as part of the development of a 10Gbps
integrated transceiver design. The transceiver design is
based on a Xenpak compliant module.
The optical coupling design consists of direct coupling
of laser diode emission to a Mach-Zehnder optical
modulator with an air gap separation determined by the laser
emission divergence and the mode field diameter of the
waveguide. The laser and the modulator are assembled on a
planar silicon optical bench. Simulation studies were
conducted for reflections at air/modulator interface reaching
the laser using ray trace methods with coherent Gaussian
source. The results obtained for elliptical Gaussian beam
indicated that the reflected energy could be weak and does
not have a significant impact on laser operation. This
suggested that the laser beam can be directly coupled into
the modulator without an intermediate optical isolator.
Thermal simulations are conducted to estimate the amount
of junction heating and solutions are proposed to reduce the
0-7803-8205-6/03/$17.00 ©2003 IEEE
temperature differential without using expensive thermo
electric coolers (TEC).
1. Introduction
Fiber optic communication has been around for the past
two decades in the long haul and core networks while the
technology is being introduced in metro networks. Optical
transceivers are the modules which integrate the optical
transmit and receive sections with high speed electronics in
optical communications (ref 1). The present work is part of a
10Gbps transceiver development project. The transceiver
uses a Distributed Feed-Back (DFB) laser diode (LD) source
in continuous wave (CW) mode. Optical modulation is
achieved by developing a Mach-Zehnder interferometer
polymer optical modulator on a silicon wafer. Functional
integration is achieved by incorporating electrical devices
like 4:1 multiplexer, CW LD driver, modulator driver, trans-
impedance amplifier, clock and data recovery circuit and 1:4
de-multiplexer within the transceiver housing. Thus, the
package format is chosen as Xenpak. The module consists
of these devices in bare chip form on a BT substrate while
the optical elements are assembled on a planar silicon
optical bench. This enables less number of external
components in the network implementation. The transceiver
design includes a method of coupling light efficiently from
the source to the waveguide. Semiconductor laser diodes
exhibit asymmetric emission profile and coupling this light
into an optical fiber or waveguide can be a challenging task.
The 10 Gbps transceiver layout is shown schematically in
figure 1.
Fig 1: Schematic of the 10Gbps Transceiver Module
The velocity of light in a dielectric material is a function
of refractive index. The electronic charge distribution of
some materials can be configured using applied electrical
voltage leading to change in refractive index and change of
velocity of light. When an optical interferometer is
constructed with such material and light is allowed to
advance in one arm and retard in the other at a defined rate,
652 2003 Electronics Packaging Technology Conference
the output of the interferometer can be modulated. Optical
modulators existing in the market are Mach-Zehnder
interferometers made of Lithium Niobate (LiNbO3)
material. These modulators operate up to 10GHz with drive
voltages of 6V to 8V pp depending on the length and cross-
section. The insertion loss is low (about 3-5dB). The
modulator needs to be long as the electro-optic coefficient is
not so high requiring higher driving voltages. However,
polymer electro-optical materials are being developed due to
the lower cost, lower driving voltage and possibility to drive
at higher speeds. The attention towards polymer optical
modulators is mainly due to their high electro optic
coefficients, lower dielectric constant, good thermal stability
and reasonable material absorption loss. In the polymer
interferometer modulator, the electric field amplitude is
modulated using the electro optic property of polymer using
the polarization rotation of aligned molecules with applied
voltage.
2. Polymer optical modulator and optical coupler
Light emitted from the continuous mode Laser Diode is
coupled to the fiber through an electro optical modulator
and a polymer 3 dB Y branch. The junction of the Y is
coupled to the fiber and laser diode and photo diode are
placed at the other end. Fig. 4 shows the schematic structure
for the symmetric Y-branch for combining the transmit and
the receive sections. The Y-branch consists of an input
waveguide, a tapered waveguide section and two branching
waveguides. The effective refractive indices for the guiding
region and the surrounding region are the same as the
polymer optical modulator. The branching waveguides have
the shape of cosine arc to keep a small propagation angle.
The width of the branch and the placement of laser diode
and photo diode are optimized to ensure passive alignment
and matched to the pad layout of electronic devices. The
distance between the Y branch to the laser diode is
optimized for matching the mode field diameter. .
The Y junction also forms the fundamental element in
Mach–Zehnder interferometers as power splitter and
combiner. The cross-section of the waveguide for the
modulator is 5um x 7um. The waveguide branching angle is
~0.6°. The active branch length is 20000um (2cm)
compared to 6-8cm for Lithium Niobate modulators. Thus,
the total length of the modulator is 26.2mm which can be
integrated inside a transceiver package. The polymer
modulator is fabricated on a silicon substrate. Passive
polymers are used for upper and lower claddings while the
active EO polymer is used as the core layer. The refractive
index and geometric profile of the EO modulator is
described in figure 2. Figure 3 shows the optical simulation
results for the modulator. It can be seen that the propagation
transmission within the waveguide is uniform and the
propagation losses are low. The propagation loss within the
modulator is around 4dB.
100um
60 um
3000 µm
20000 um details (sketch not to scale)
Figure 2. Polymer EO modulator with dimensional
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Figure 3. EO modulator results
Figure 4. Y branch power coupler layout
3. Optical coupling design
A realistic edge emitting semiconductor laser diode with
a Gaussian half angles of 30 x 45 degrees is considered as
the source. A lens compensates for the different numerical
aperture of the laser and waveguide and provides
compatibility between the two mode fields. The coupling is
optimum when the mode field diameters of the LD and the
waveguide are matched. For the transceiver being
developed, direct coupling of laser light to the polymer
optical modulator was considered to reduce the number of
components and assembly process. The placement distances
were optimized for efficient power coupling. From
simulation, the source to waveguide optical coupling
achieved is about 55% (-2.6dB) under ideal alignment
conditions (ref 2).
To compute the retro-reflection into the laser from the
waveguide surface, the laser diode emission is considered to
be asymmetric as above with a divergence of 30 x 45
degrees. The waveguide is placed at a distance of 20um
from the laser diode giving an illuminated elliptical area of
10.7 x 16.6um diameter at the waveguide facet. The
waveguide surface reflection is computed as 4.6 % from the
Fresnel surface reflection formulae and the reflections are
reasonably considered to be specular. The light reflected
back from the waveguide is incident on the laser front facet.
The laser diode front facet is assumed to have a transmission
of 30% (70% reflection). The illumination spot at the laser
front facet has a 21x33um diameter while the laser diode
facet emission point
dimensions are considered
as 4umx2um. Thus, the
amount of reflected light
3000 µm
coupled back into the laser
diode can be computed to
100 µm
2003 Electronics Packaging Technology Conference
be 0.197uW giving a coupling efficiency of -37 dB. With a
maximum laser power of 5mW (7dBm), the maximum
reflection from the waveguide is -30dBm which is low
enough to avoid laser wavelength chirping.
4. Laser diode assembly
The performance and reliability of semiconductor laser
diode affects the functionality of the whole package. Since
the wavelength and power output are a function of junction
temperature, thermal solutions for maintaining the desirable
temperature is necessary for optical transmission
components. Simulation results showed that most of the
heat dissipated from LD junction will transfer through the
laser diode carrier or submount by conduction (ref 3). In
conventional transmitter packages, the p-n junction of laser
diode is near the top side of LD. The structure is so-called
junction-up (j-up) configuration. Junction is the active
region and the heat source. The semiconductor laser diode is
mounted on a carrier chip for optical axis alignment and
ease of die level testing. Figure 5 shows the conventional
laser diode assembly structure.
LD
Junction
Carrier
Sub mount
Figure 5.Typical optical package structure (j-up assembly)
The thermal resistance θjt, is the sum of thermal
resistance through LD, θld, thermal resistance of
interconnect, θint, thermal resistance through carrier, θca and
thermal resistance of sub mount, θsub. Because of the poor
thermal conductivity of semiconductor material, the thermal
resistance between junction and LD case is considerable. It
covers more than 90% of overall resistance.
The concept of junction-down (j-down) LD assembly,
where the LD is assembled up-side down is shown in figure
6. The thermal resistance of j-down LD is much less than j-
up LD (Ref 4) since the thermal path from junction to base
of j-down LD is much shorter. For j-down LD assembly, as
shown in figure 6, anode is wire bonded and cathode faces
to carrier. So the difficulty is LD stands on carrier by only a
small cathode.
Although the thermal resistance θld in LD is reduced
from junction to bottom, the conductive area of interconnect
between LD and carrier is as small as cathode size. So the
thermal resistance of interconnect θint is extremely high,
which neutralize the thermal benefit from θld of junction
down LD. We conducted simulations on LD assemblies with
different interconnect areas. The results showed that large
interconnect helps reduce thermal resistance of j-down
assembly. As interconnect area increases from 2% to 100%,
654
the thermal resistance, θjt, reduces from 263°C/w to 95°C,
which is a significant improvement. The motivation for
developing j-down LD assembly is to have low cost thermal
solution for LD packages without using expensive Thermo
Electric Cooler (TEC). The objective of these thermal
simulations is to keep the junction temperature at specified
working temperature corresponding to the wavelength of
laser.
LD
Junction
Carrier
Sub mount
Figure 6. J-down LD assembly structure and thermal path
In any optical assembly the most challenging task is to
align and retain the alignment of optical axis of various
optical devices/components. In this study we attempted
passive alignment techniques. There are various
designs/techniques for passive alignment such as V-grooves,
U grooves made in the SiOB. These types of features
typically involve more than ten processes and hence results
in reduced dimensional accuracies and increased cost. U-
grooves for passive alignment of components also have
issues in assembly like pick and place. Hence, in the present
study, the SiOB has been designed and fabricated as a flat
structure to passively align and maintain all the components
along the optical axis.
4. Conclusions
This paper presented the design and development of
polymer optical modulators for 10Gb optical transceivers
and planar integration of laser and modulator on the same
substrate to achieve functional integration. Polymer based
waveguide design and simulation results are provided.
Results of optical coupling design between laser diode and
polymer waveguide and back reflection studies are included.
The application of novel methods of cost reduction for
optical transceivers like uncooled laser operation through J-
down assembly for DWDM transceivers is also discussed
and thermal simulation results are presented. This solution
gives a better thermal performance without compromising
on optical performance and reduces the cost of optical
modules.
References
1. Larry Dalton et al., Journal of Material Chemistry, Sep
1999, pp 1905-1920.
2. Pamidighantam V Ramana, et al., SPIE Vol 4906, Nov
2002.
3. Ling Xie, et al., 4th IEEE Electronics Packaging
Technology Conference, Singapore, Dec 2002.
4. Olivier J. F. Martin, et al, IEEE Journal of Quantum
Electronics, Vol. 28, No. 11(1992), pp.2582-2588.
2003 Electronics Packaging Technology Conference