Ultra-high-extinction-ratio 2 × 2 silicon optical switch with variable splitter

Abstract

We demonstrate a record-high extinction-ratio of 50.4 dB in a 2 × 2 silicon Mach-Zehnder switch equipped with a variable splitter as the front 3-dB splitter. The variable splitter is adjusted to compensate for the splitting-ratio mismatch between the front and rear 3-dB splitters. The high extinction ratio does not rely on waveguide crossings and meets a strong demand in applications to multiport circuit switches. Large fabrication tolerance will make the high extinction ratio compatible with a volume production with standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor fabrication facilities.

High performace silicon 2x2 optical switch based on a thermo-optically tunable multimode interference coupler and efficient electrodes

“…The power consumption can be reduced to 24.9 mW by introducing the silica trench in the MMI structure but at expenses of a higher switching time of 4.25 µs (P π ·τ≈108 mW·µs). Overall, the obtained results outperform the performance of MZI switches based also on the placement the heaters on top of the cladding layer [6,9,12]. The best obtained figure of merit is also comparable to thermo-optic MZI switches based on doping the silicon to directly build the heaters into the waveguide (P π ·τ≈67 mW·µs in [11]).…”

“…Furthermore, an additional tuning mechanism, which will increase the total power consumption, is also necessary to counteract possible fabrication deviations [5]. On the other hand, silicon MZI switches have a wider optical bandwidth and higher robustness but usually suffer from a larger footprint and higher power consumption that limits the scalability to build switching fabrics with a large number of ports [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

60.5 dB Silicon Mach-Zehnder Interferometer using Self-Optimising Beam-Splitters

“…Using optimized beam-splitters BSL and BSR, we then implement the MZI with the ultra-high extinction ratio of 60.5 dB, making a new record on silicon integrated photonics device. The best previous result reported is 50.4 dB where the device consists of only one variable beam-splitter [5]. Considering the limits of the measurement apparatus in our current experimental setup-the voltage driver's resolution is limited to 0.005V -a more precise result with higher extinction ratio can be obtained using a higher resolution voltage driver.…”

Design and Fabrication of Low-Insertion-Loss and Low-Crosstalk Broadband $2\times 2$ Mach–Zehnder Silicon Photonic Switches

“…This should be considered when scaling up the number of ports in a switch matrix in which having a reproducible elementary switching element is critical to guarantee low insertion loss and crosstalk for the fabric. In order to fully benefit from the broadband design in a large optical switch matrix, tunable BBC [27] capable of trimming the phase with good thermooptic efficiency may be required.…”