Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 3, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/srep03546
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Funding
- research program of the Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM)
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
- Dutch ministry of economic affairs
- EPSRC
- research program NanonextNL
- research program MEMPHIS
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/F001622/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [EP/F001622/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Wavelength-scale optical modulators are essential building blocks for future on-chip optical interconnects. Any modulator design is a trade-off between bandwidth, size and fabrication complexity, size being particularly important as it determines capacitance and actuation energy. Here, we demonstrate an interesting alternative that is only 3 mm long, only uses silicon on insulator (SOI) material and accommodates several nanometres of optical bandwidth at 1550 nm. The device is based on a photonic crystal waveguide: by combining the refractive index shift with slow-light enhanced absorption induced by free-carrier injection, we achieve an operation bandwidth that significantly exceeds the shift of the bandedge. We compare a 3 mm and an 80 mm long modulator and surprisingly, the shorter device outperforms the longer one. Despite its small size, the device achieves an optical bandwidth as broad as 7 nm for an extinction ratio of 10 dB, and modulation times ranging between 500 ps and 100 ps.
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