On-Chip Selective Dual-Mode Switch for 2-μm Wavelength High-Speed Optical Interconnection

Abstract

In this work, we designed and fabricated a dual-mode switch based on triple-waveguide couplers and two thermal phase shifters, and demonstrated the first silicon-integrated mode division multiplexing (MDM) switching network for <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2-\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> waveband. The proposed dual-mode switch shows < 2.6 dB insertion loss, <−20 dB inter-mode crosstalk at 1960 nm, with broadband operation over 100 nm. The experimental results of dynamic switching at 10 kHz presents 9.2- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> rising time and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$13.2-\mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> falling time, with switching power of 19.2 mW. High speed on-chip MDM routing of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times 60$ </tex-math></inline-formula> Gbps signal was experimentally demonstrated using the proposed 2- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> MDM switching network, drawing the promising prospect for the future photonic integration and high-speed MDM networking at 2- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> waveband.