Low-Insertion-Loss and Power-Efficient 32 × 32 Silicon Photonics Switch With Extremely High-Δ Silica PLC Connector

Abstract

We fabricate a 32 × 32 silicon photonics switch on a 300-mm silicon-on-insulator wafer by using our complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor pilot line equipped with an immersion ArF scanner and demonstrate an average fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 10.8 dB with a standard deviation of 0.54 dB, and on-chip electric power consumption of 1.9 W. The insertion loss and the power consumption are approximately 1/60, and less than 1/4 of our previous results, respectively. These significant improvements are achieved by design and fabrication optimization of waveguides and intersections on the chip, and by employing a novel optical fiber connector based on extremely-high-Δ silica planar-lightwave-circuit (PLC) technology. The minimum crosstalk was -26.6 dB at a wavelength of 1547 nm, and -20-dB crosstalk bandwidth was 3.5 nm. Furthermore, we demonstrate low-crosstalk bandwidth expansion by using output port exchanged element switches. We achieve a -20 dB crosstalk bandwidth of 14.2 nm, which is four-times wider than that of the conventional element switch based 32 × 32 switch.