Colorless directional coupler with dispersion engineered sub-wavelength structure

Abstract

Directional couplers are extensively used devices in integrated optics, but suffer from limited operational wavelength range. Here we use, for the first time, the dispersive properties of sub-wavelength gratings to achieve a fivefold enhancement in the operation bandwidth of a silicon-on-insulator directional coupler. This approach does not compromise the size or the phase response of the device. The sub-wavelength grating based directional coupler we propose covers a 100 nm bandwidth with an imbalance of ≤ 0.6 dB between its outputs, as supported by full 3D FDTD simulations.