Kuanping Shang

CMOS-compatible, athermal silicon ring modulators clad with titanium dioxide

We present the design, fabrication and characterization of athermal nano-photonic silicon ring modulators. The athermalization method employs compensation of the silicon core thermo-optic contribution with that from the amorphous titanium dioxide (a-TiO(2)) overcladding with a negative thermo-optic coefficient. We developed a new CMOS-compatible fabrication process involving low temperature RF magnetron sputtering of high-density and low-loss a-TiO(2) that can withstand subsequent elevated-temperature CMOS processes. Silicon ring resonators with 275 nm wide rib waveguide clad with a-TiO(2) showed near complete athermalization and moderate optical losses. Small-signal testing of the micro-resonator modulators showed high extinction ratio and gigahertz bandwidth.

Theory and Design Optimization of Energy-Efficient Hydrophobic Wafer-bonded III–V/Si Hybrid Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

This paper discusses optimum design strategies for high-efficiency hybrid semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA). A comprehensive model is presented to determine the width, composition, and number of quantum wells for a hydrophobic bonded SOA with In s-x-y)Ga (x)Al (y) As quantum-wells (QW). Optimizing the interfacial bonding layer, III-V wafer stack design, straight hybrid amplifier dimensions and flared amplifier configurations leads to a design for up to 35% wall-plug efficiency at 2 mW input and 10 dB gain. Likewise, optimized dimensions also lead to 15% wall-plug efficiency (WPE) at 0.1 mW input and 10 dB gain. Thermal effects due to the effect of the buried oxide layer (BOX) is presented and methods of improved thermal extraction is discussed.

Demonstration of Cladding-Pumped Six-Core Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier

We demonstrate cladding-pumped six-core Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) using two different pump coupling schemes: edge-coupled and side-coupled pumping, where a single multimode laser diode can be applied to pump all cores. Using two in-line cladding-pumped EDFAs at the input and output of a 31-km coupled-six-core fiber, we realized 465-km space-division multiplexing and wavelength division multiplexing transmission in a recirculating loop and achieved a spectral efficiency of 18 bits/s/Hz. Through side-coupled pumping, the cladding-pumped six-core EDFA produced >18-dBm output power per core and had <;6-dB noise figure across the C-band.

Highly efficient chip-scale III-V/silicon hybrid optical amplifiers.

We discuss the design and demonstration of highly efficient 1.55 µm hybrid III-V/Silicon semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA). The optimized III-V wafer stack consists of Al(0.10)In(0.71)Ga(0.18)As multiple quantum wells (MQW) and Al(0.48)In(0.52)As electron stop layers to realize SOAs with high wall-plug efficiency (WPE). We present various designs and experimentally determine WPE values for 2 mW and 0.1 mW input power amplification. The 400 µm long flared SOA achieved the highest WPE value of 12.1% for output power > 10mW and the 400 µm long straight SOA achieved the highest WPE value of 7.3% for output power < 10mW. These are the highest WPE values ever obtained for 1.55 µm SOAs.

Athermal silicon ring resonators clad with titanium dioxide for 1.3µm wavelength operation

We investigate the athermal characteristics of silicon waveguides clad with TiO(2) designed for 1.3 µm wavelength operation. Using CMOS-compatible fabrication processes, we realize and experimentally demonstrate silicon photonic ring resonators with resonant wavelengths that vary by less than 6 pm/°C at 1.3 µm. The measured ring resonance wavelengths across the 20-50°C temperature range show nearly complete cancellation of the first-order thermo-optical effects and exhibit second-order thermo-optical effects expected from the combination of TiO(2) and Si.

Rapidly reconfigurable high-fidelity optical arbitrary waveform generation in heterogeneous photonic integrated circuits

This paper demonstrates rapidly reconfigurable, high-fidelity optical arbitrary waveform generation (OAWG) in a heterogeneous photonic integrated circuit (PIC). The heterogeneous PIC combines advantages of high-speed indium phosphide (InP) modulators and low-loss, high-contrast silicon nitride (Si3N4) arrayed waveguide gratings (AWGs) so that high-fidelity optical waveform syntheses with rapid waveform updates are possible. The generated optical waveforms spanned a 160 GHz spectral bandwidth starting from an optical frequency comb consisting of eight comb lines separated by 20 GHz channel spacing. The Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) values of the generated waveforms were approximately 16.4%. The OAWG module can rapidly and arbitrarily reconfigure waveforms upon every pulse arriving at 2 ns repetition time. The result of this work indicates the feasibility of truly dynamic optical arbitrary waveform generation where the reconfiguration rate or the modulator bandwidth must exceed the channel spacing of the AWG and the optical frequency comb.

Uniform emission, constant wavevector silicon grating surface emitter for beam steering with ultra-sharp instantaneous field-of-view

We report on uniform emission intensity profile, uniform propagation constant silicon gratings for beam steering application with ultra-sharp instantaneous field-of-view (IFOV). To achieve uniform emission intensity across relatively long emission length, we designed a custom grating with varying Si3N4 width and duty cycle while maintaining a uniform propagation constant for relatively narrow divergence emission pattern. We designed and fabricated the custom Si3N4/Si grating with the varying Si3N4 width/duty cycle together with the reference Si3N4/Si grating with a constant 50:50 duty cycle. The custom grating demonstrated the beam steering angle value of 6.6° by sweeping wavelength between 1530 nm and 1575 nm with the emission length over 1 mm. The measured IFOV based on the 3-dB beamwidth values of the far field patterns for the TE polarization are 0.10° and 0.75° for the custom grating and for the reference grating, respectively. The custom grating also indicates mode-selective behavior due to the perturbation of propagation constant for input modes other than TE polarization. The measured TE-mode to TM-mode suppression ratio for the custom grating is approximately 8.2 dB peak-to-peak measured at far field.

Hybrid integration of modified uni-traveling carrier photodiodes on a multi-layer silicon nitride platform using total reflection mirrors

We demonstrate hybrid integration of modified uni-traveling carrier photodiodes on a multi-layer silicon nitride platform using total reflection mirrors etched by focused ion beam. The hybrid photodetectors show external responsivity of 0.15 A/W and bandwidth of 3.5 GHz for devices with a diameter of 80 µm. The insertion loss of the waveguide is 3 dB and the coupling efficiency of the total reflection mirror is -3 dB. The highest RF output power is -0.5 dBm measured at 3 GHz with 9 mA photocurrent and -9 V bias.

Athermal silicon ring modulators clad with titanium dioxide by RF magnetron sputtering

We present design, fabrication and measurement of athermal silicon ring modulators fabricated on a SOI platform, overclad with 830nm thick amorphous titanium dioxide. Current injection achieves 35 dB extinction intensity modulation.

Silicon nitride tri-layer vertical Y-junction and 3D couplers with arbitrary splitting ratio for photonic integrated circuits

We designed and demonstrated a tri-layer Si3N4/SiO2 photonic integrated circuit capable of vertical interlayer coupling with arbitrary splitting ratios. Based on this multilayer photonic integrated circuit platform with each layer thicknesses of 150 nm, 50 nm, and 150 nm, we designed and simulated the vertical Y-junctions and 3D couplers with arbitrary power splitting ratios between 1:10 and 10:1 and with negligible(< -50 dB) reflection. Based on the design, we fabricated and demonstrated tri-layer vertical Y-junctions with the splitting ratios of 1:1 and 3:2 with excess optical losses of 0.230 dB. Further, we fabricated and demonstrated the 1 × 3 3D couplers with the splitting ratio of 1:1:4 for symmetric structures and variable splitting ratio for asymmetric structures.