Compact, 15 Gb/s electro-optic modulator through carrier accumulation in a hybrid Si/SiO_2/Si microdisk

Abstract

High-speed electro-optic modulators are among the key elements in any optical interconnect system. In this work we design and demonstrate an electro-optic modulator based on carrier accumulation on a multilayer integrated photonic platform comprising a stack of high quality Si, SiO(2), and Si layers. The device consists of a 3-μm radius microdisk with an embedded capacitor. Characterization results reveal an operation bandwidth of exceeding 10 GHz. The device is capable of transmitting 15 Gb/s with the on/off keying format in a single polarization. The proposed structure can be self-trimmed by up to 1 nm in wavelength by applying a dc bias voltage without any power consumption. This feature eliminates the need for power-hungry thermal-based compensation methods to address the resonance wavelength mismatch due to fabrication imperfections.