Broadband Modulation of Light by Using an Electro-Optic Polymer

Abstract

A major challenge to increasing bandwidth in optical telecommunications is to encode electronic signals onto a lightwave carrier by modulating the light up to very fast rates. Polymer electro-optic materials have the necessary properties to function in photonic devices beyond the 40-GHz bandwidth currently available. An appropriate choice of polymers is shown to effectively eliminate the factors contributing to an optical modulator's decay in the high-frequency response. The resulting device modulates light with a bandwidth of 150 to 200 GHz and produces detectable modulation signal at 1.6 THz. These rates are faster than anticipated bandwidth requirements for the foreseeable future.

A Hybrid Electrooptic Microring Resonator-Based $1 \times 4\times 1$ ROADM for Wafer Scale Optical Interconnects

“…These materials have demonstrated optical modulation up to 100 GHz in commercial devices and up to 1.6 THz experimentally [7], [8].…”

Free-standing all-polymer microring resonator optical filter

“…In particular, recently polymeric optical modulators have demonstrated low switching voltage [1] and high modulation bandwidth [2]. These demonstrations are testament to both the remarkable optical nonlinearity of doped polymeric materials as well as the exceptional inherent material bandwidth.…”

“…3 shows the output spectrum (circles) for the free-standing microring optical filter as measured over an input wavelength scan of 10 nm. As previously mentioned, the output should consist of a periodic series of nulls in wavelength, given by (2). The theoretical fit of the data is shown in Fig.…”

Fluorinated and Non-Fluorinated Electro-Optic Copolymers: Determination of the Time and Temperature Stability of the Induced Electro-Optic Coefficient

“…Hybrid integration of passive wave-guiding structures with these active materials is a route to low-cost, high-performance modules. In this context, progress in organic materials demonstrates the excellent electro-optic properties and versatility for technological applications, for example a polymeric electro-optic modulation, based on a Mach-Zehnder integrated interferometer (MZI) operating at over 200 GHz was demonstrated [5] or electro-optic modulators based on microring resonator design [6,7].…”