Ultra Wideband Dual-Output Thin Film Lithium Niobate Intensity Modulator

This paper presents the design, optimization, fabrication, and characterization of a dual-output, wideband, thin-film lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder Modulator (TFLN-MZM). The device is designed with ridge etched waveguides for operation at a 1.55 \mum wavelength. The dual-output is achieved using a 2×...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of selected topics in quantum electronics 2024-07, Vol.30 (4: Adv. Mod. and Int. beyond Si and InP-based Plt.), p.1-13
Main Authors: Zhu, Xiaofeng, de Freitas, Marco Moller, Shi, Shouyuan, Mercante, Andrew, Yao, Peng, Wang, Fuquan, Shopp, Benjamin A., Cullen, Christopher J., Prather, Dennis W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Broadband
Design optimization
dual-output MZM
Electrodes
Indexes
Lithium niobates
LNOI
Mach-Zehnder interferometers
Microwave devices
microwave photonic link
Microwave photonics
Modulation
Optical buffering
Optical modulation
Optical waveguides
Radio frequency
Thin films
Ultrawideband
Waveguides
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper presents the design, optimization, fabrication, and characterization of a dual-output, wideband, thin-film lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder Modulator (TFLN-MZM). The device is designed with ridge etched waveguides for operation at a 1.55 \mum wavelength. The dual-output is achieved using a 2×2 multi-mode interference (MMI) splitter with an extinction ratio (ER) of over 40 dB. The measured DC half-wave voltage (V_\pi) is 1.02 V. To achieve wideband operation, segmented electrodes are optimized to provide both wideband index matching and low loss. Accordingly, the measured 3 dB bandwidth is 95 GHz and the radio-frequency (RF) electrode loss is 0.24 dB/(cm\cdotGHz^{1/2}). The motivation for this device is in balanced microwave photonic links (MPLs) for Radio-Frequency-over-Fiber (RFoF) applications.
ISSN:1077-260X
1558-4542
DOI:10.1109/JSTQE.2024.3388324