Nanophotonic lithium niobate electro-optic modulators
Nanophotonic lithium niobate electro-optic modulators
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DOI：
10.1364/oe.26.001547
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发表时间：
2018-01-22
期刊：
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
Loncar, Marko
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Wang, Cheng;Zhang, Mian;Loncar, Marko
自光纤通信出现以来，铌酸锂（LN）一直是电光调制器的首选材料，具有高数据带宽和出色的信号保真度。然而，传统的LN调制器体积庞大、昂贵且耗电，并且不能满足现代光数据链路中不断增长的需求。芯片级、高度集成的LN调制器可以提供解决这个问题的方案，但在LN薄膜中制造低损耗器件一直具有挑战性。在这里，我们克服了这一障碍，并证明单片集成LN电光调制器，显着更小，更有效地比传统的散装LN设备，同时保持LN的优良材料性能。我们的紧凑型LN电光平台由低损耗纳米级LN波导，微环谐振器和小型化马赫-曾德尔干涉仪组成，通过直接将LN薄膜成形为亚波长结构而制成。在纳米尺度下对光场和微波场的有效限制显著提高了器件性能，其半波电光调制效率为1.8 V中心点cm，同时以高达40 Gbps的数据速率运行。我们的单片LN纳米光子平台可以实现高性能有源元件的密集集成，为未来的高速，低功耗和高性价比的通信网络开辟了新的途径。(c)2018年美国光学学会根据OSA开放获取出版协议的条款
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 center dot 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. (c) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement