High-performance and linear thin-film lithium niobate Mach–Zehnder modulators on silicon up to 50  GHz

Rao, Ashutosh; Patil, Aniket; Rabiei, Payam; Honardoost, Amirmahdi; DeSalvo, Richard; Paolella, A.; Fathpour, Sasan

doi:10.1364/ol.41.005700

Cited by 211 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…3c). This translates to a voltage-length product of 1.8 V·cm, an order of magnitude better than bulk LN devices [25,30] and significantly higher than previously reported LN thin-film devices because of the highly-confined electro-optic overlap [20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”

mentioning

confidence: 74%

Nanophotonic lithium niobate electro-optic modulators

Wang¹,

Zhang²,

Stern³

et al. 2018

Opt. Express

544

319

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Since the emergence of optical fiber communications, lithium niobate (LN) has been the material of choice for electro-optic modulators, featuring high data bandwidth and excellent signal fidelity. Conventional LN modulators however are bulky, expensive and power hungry, and cannot meet the growing demand in modern optical data links. Chip-scale, highly integrated, LN modulators could offer solutions to this problem, yet the fabrication of low-loss devices in LN thin films has been challenging. Here we overcome this hurdle and demonstrate monolithically integrated LN electro-optic modulators that are significantly smaller and more efficient than traditional bulk LN devices, while preserving LN's excellent material properties. Our compact LN electro-optic platform consists of low-loss nanoscale LN waveguides, micro-ring resonators and miniaturized Mach-Zehnder interferometers, fabricated by directly shaping LN thin films into sub-wavelength structures. The efficient confinement of both optical and microwave fields at the nanoscale dramatically improves the device performances featuring a half-wave electro-optic modulation efficiency of 1.8 V∙cm while operating at data rates up to 40 Gbps. Our monolithic LN nanophotonic platform enables dense integration of high-performance active components, opening new avenues for future high-speed, low power and cost-effective communication networks.

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mentioning

confidence: 74%

Nanophotonic lithium niobate electro-optic modulators

Wang¹,

Zhang²,

Stern³

et al. 2018

Opt. Express

544

319

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As a result, conventional LN modulators are bulky in size and low in modulation efficiency (V π L>10 V•cm). Recently, LN membranes on insulator (LNOI) has emerged as a promising platform to form waveguide devices with good confinement [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] , and LNOI modulators with a low drive voltage and ultra-high EO bandwidth have been recently demonstrated 39,[41][42] .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

High-performance hybrid silicon and lithium niobate Mach–Zehnder modulators for 100 Gbit s−1 and beyond

et al. 2019

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Optical modulators are at the heart of optical communication links. Ideally, they should feature low insertion loss, low drive voltage, large modulation bandwidth, high linearity, compact footprint and low manufacturing cost. Unfortunately, these criteria have only been achieved on separate occasions. Based on a Silicon and Lithium Niobate hybrid integration platform, we demonstrate Mach-Zehnder modulators that simultaneously fulfill these criteria. The presented device exhibits an insertion loss of 2.5 dB, voltage-length product of 2.2 V•cm, high linearity, electro-optic bandwidth of at least 70 GHz and modulation rates up to 112 Gbit/s. The high-performance modulator is realized by seamless integration of highcontrast waveguide based on Lithium Niobate -the most mature modulator material -with compact, low-loss silicon circuits. The hybrid platform demonstrated here allows for the combination of "best-in-breed" active and passive components, opening up new avenues for enabling future high-speed, energy efficient and cost-effective optical communication networks.

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“…However, the traditional design and fabrication approach of LN MZM's, based on ion exchange or implantation into bulk LN, is a relatively slow, expensive and labor-intensive process, which is not compatible with the complex, multi-functional integrated optics microchips being currently developed and deployed. As a step towards integrated modulators, a variety of approaches using thin-film LN [5,6] have been reported [7,8,9,10,11]. The ability to match the optical and microwave indices by 3 varying the dimensions of the LN layer and the rib-loading Si waveguide offer new design opportunities to achieve true optical-RF phase matching to very high frequencies without artificial velocity matching structures.…”

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confidence: 99%

Bonded thin film lithium niobate modulator on a silicon photonics platform exceeding 100 GHz 3-dB electrical modulation bandwidth

et al. 2018

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We demonstrate an ultra-high-bandwidth Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator (EOM), based on foundry-fabricated silicon (Si) photonics, made using conventional lithography and wafer-scale fabrication, oxide-bonded at 200C to a lithium niobate (LN) thin film. Our design integrates silicon photonics light input/output and optical components, such as directional couplers and low-radius bends. No etching or patterning of the thin film LN is required. This hybrid Si-LN MZM achieves beyond 106 GHz 3-dB electrical modulation bandwidth, the highest of any silicon photonic or lithium niobate (phase) modulator.

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High-performance and linear thin-film lithium niobate Mach–Zehnder modulators on silicon up to 50 GHz

Cited by 211 publications

References 36 publications

Nanophotonic lithium niobate electro-optic modulators

Nanophotonic lithium niobate electro-optic modulators

High-performance hybrid silicon and lithium niobate Mach–Zehnder modulators for 100 Gbit s−1 and beyond

Bonded thin film lithium niobate modulator on a silicon photonics platform exceeding 100 GHz 3-dB electrical modulation bandwidth

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