Silicon waveguide modulator based on carrier depletion in periodically interleaved PN junctions Zhi-Yong Li, 1,* Dan-Xia Xu, 2 W. Ross McKinnon, 2 Siegfried Janz, 2 Jens H. Schmid, 2 Pavel Cheben 2 and Jin-Zhong Yu 1 1 Institute of Semiconductors (IS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), 35A Tsinghua East Road, Beijing 100083, China 2 Institute for Microstructural Sciences (IMS), National Research Council (NRC), Building M-50, 1200 Montreal Road, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6, Canada * lizhy@semi.ac.cn Abstract: We present the design and numerical simulation results for a silicon waveguide modulator based on carrier depletion in a linear array of periodically interleaved PN junctions that are oriented perpendicular to the light propagation direction. In this geometry the overlap of the optical waveguide mode with the depletion region is much larger than in designs using a single PN junction aligned parallel to the waveguide propagation direction. Simulations predict that an optimized modulator will have a high modulation efficiency of 0.56 V·cm for a 3V bias, with a 3 dB frequency bandwidth of over 40 GHz. This device has a length of 1.86 mm with a maximum intrinsic loss of 4.3 dB at 0V bias, due to free carrier absorption. ©2009 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (060.4080) Modulation; (250.7360) waveguide modulators; (130.4110) modulators; (250.5300) Photonic integrated circuits. References and links 1. R. A. Soref, and B. R. Bennett, “Electrooptical effects in silicon,” IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 23(1), 123–129 (1987). 2. B. Jalali, and S. Fathpour, “Silicon Photonics,” IEEE J. Lightwave Technol. 24(12), 4600–4615 (2006). 3. L. C. Kimerling, A. B. Apsel, M. Beals, D. Carothers, Y. Chen, T. Conway, D. Gill, M. Grove, C. Hong, M. F. Lipson, J. Liu, J. Michel, S. S. Patel, A. T. Pomerene, M. Rasras, D. K. Sparacin, A. E. White, and C. Wong, “Recent advances in CMOS compatible integrated photonics,” Proc. SPIE 6125, 612502 (2006). 4. R. S. Jacobsen, K. N. Andersen, P. I. Borel, J. Fage-Pedersen, L. H. Frandsen, O. Hansen, M. Kristensen, A. V. Lavrinenko, G. Moulin, H. Ou, C. Peucheret, B. Zsigri, and A. Bjarklev, “Strained silicon as a new electro-optic material,” Nature 441(7090), 199–202 (2006). 5. Q. F. Xu, S. Manipatruni, B. Schmidt, J. Shakya, and M. Lipson, “12.5 Gbit/s carrier-injection-based silicon micro-ring silicon modulators,” Opt. Express 15(2), 430–436 (2007). 6. W. M. Green, M. J. Rooks, L. Sekaric, and Y. A. Vlasov, “Ultra-compact, low RF power, 10 Gb/s silicon Mach- Zehnder modulator,” Opt. Express 15(25), 17106–17113 (2007). 7. S. J. Spector, M. E. Grein, R. T. Schulein, M. W. Geis, J. U. Yoon, D. E. Lennon, F. Gan, F. X. Kartner, and T. M. Lyszczarz, “Compact carrier injection based Mach-Zehnder modulator in silicon,” in Technical Digest of 2007 Integrated Photonics Research, ITuE5 (2007). 8. A. S. Liu, R. Jones, L. Liao, D. Samara-Rubio, D. Rubin, O. Cohen, R. Nicolaescu, and M. Paniccia, “A high- speed silicon optical modulator based on a metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor,” Nature 427(6975), 615–618 (2004). 9. F. Gardes, G. Reed, N. Emerson, and C. Png, “A sub-micron depletion-type photonic modulator in Silicon On Insulator,” Opt. Express 13(22), 8845–8854 (2005). 10. A. S. Liu, L. Liao, D. Rubin, H. Nguyen, B. Ciftcioglu, Y. Chetrit, N. Izhaky, and M. Paniccia, “High-speed optical modulation based on carrier depletion in a silicon waveguide,” Opt. Express 15(2), 660–668 (2007). 11. F. Y. Gardes, K. L. Tsakmakidis, D. Thomson, G. T. Reed, G. Z. Mashanovich, O. Hess, and D. Avitabile, “Micrometer size polarization independent depletion-type photonic modulator in Silicon On Insulator,” Opt. Express 15(9), 5879–5884 (2007). 12. D. W. Zheng, D. Z. Feng, G. Gutierrez, and T. Smith, “Design of a 10 GHz Silicon Modulator Based on a 0.25 μm CMOS Process - A Silicon Photonic Approach,” Proc. SPIE 6125, 61250E (2006). 13. T. Pinguet, V. Sadagopan, A. Mekis, B. Analui, D. Kucharski, and S. Gloeckner, “A 1550 nm, 10 Gbps optical modulator with integrated driver in 130 nm CMOS, 4th IEEE International Conference on Group IV Photonics, ThA2, 186-188 (2007). (C) 2009 OSA 31 August 2009 / Vol. 17, No. 18 / OPTICS EXPRESS 15947 #113310 - $15.00 USD Received 30 Jun 2009; revised 9 Aug 2009; accepted 10 Aug 2009; published 25 Aug 2009