Characteristics of a polymer Mach-Zehnder electrooptic switch using side-coupled series-cascaded M microrings

Structure and design are proposed for a kind of novel polymer Mach-Zehnder electro-optic(EO)switch using side-coupled M series-cascaded EO microrings.Formulations are proposed to analyze its switching characteristics.The dependences of the device’s performances on M are thoroughly analyzed and concluded.As the increase of M from 2 to 10,the switching voltages for the 9 devices are as low as 0.84 V,0.82 V,0.52 V,0.5 V,0.37 V,0.36 V,0.29 V,0.28 V and 0.24 V,respectively;whereas the crosstalks under bar state are within-20.79--6.53 d B and those under cross state are within-20.36--5.29 d B.The analysis results indicate that a smaller M is preferred for dropping the insertion loss and crosstalk,and a larger M should be selected to increase the optical bandwidth and minimize the switching energy.Generally,due to low switching voltage,the proposed device shows potential applications in optical networks-on-chip.