Tomoki Tatebe

Si Photonic Crystal Slow-Light Modulators with Periodic p–n Junctions

We theoretically optimized and demonstrated the periodic p–n junction in silicon photonic crystal slow-light modulators to balance the efficiency and speed of phase shifters and reduce the power consumption compared with those of previous linear and interleaved p–n junctions. In particular, sawtooth and wavy junctions, whose profiles match with the distribution of the slow-light mode, theoretically prove effective in achieving these objectives. However, the sawtooth junction requires a high-resolution process. Therefore, we finally employed the wavy junction and obtained 25- and 32-Gb/s operations in a 200-μm device with extinction ratios of 4 and 3 dB, respectively, for an excess modulation loss of 1 dB.