High-efficiency lithium niobate modulator for K band operation

This paper reports a hybrid silicon nitride–lithium niobate electro-optic Mach–Zehnder-interferometer modulator that demonstrates overall improvements in terms of half-wave voltage, optical insertion loss, extinction ratio, and operational bandwidth. The fabricated device exhibits a DC half-wave vol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:APL photonics 2020-09, Vol.5 (9), p.91302-091302-8
Main Authors: Ahmed, Abu Naim R., Shi, Shouyuan, Mercante, Andrew, Nelan, Sean, Yao, Peng, Prather, Dennis W.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:This paper reports a hybrid silicon nitride–lithium niobate electro-optic Mach–Zehnder-interferometer modulator that demonstrates overall improvements in terms of half-wave voltage, optical insertion loss, extinction ratio, and operational bandwidth. The fabricated device exhibits a DC half-wave voltage of ∼1.3 V, a static extinction ratio of ∼27 dB, an on-chip optical loss of ∼1.53 dB, and a 3 dB electro-optic bandwidth of 29 GHz. In addition, this device operates beyond the 3 dB bandwidth, where a half-wave voltage of 3 V is extracted at 40 GHz when the device is biased at quadrature. The modulator is realized by strip-loading thin-film lithium niobate with low-pressure chemical vapor deposited silicon nitride; this enables reduced on-chip losses and allows for a lengthened 2.4 cm long interaction region that is specifically engineered for broadband performance.
ISSN:2378-0967
2378-0967
DOI:10.1063/5.0020040