Waveguide-integrated optical modulators with two-dimensional materials

Waveguide-integrated optical modulators are indispensable for on-chip optical interconnects and optical computing.To cope with the ever-increasing amount of data being generated and consumed,ultrafast waveguide-integrated optical modulators with low energy consumption are highly demanded.In recent years,two-dimensional(2D)materials have attracted a lot of attention and have provided tremendous opportunities for the development of high-performance waveguide-integrated optical modulators because of their extraordinary optoelectronic properties and versatile compatibility.This paper reviews the state-of-the-art waveguide-integrated optical modulators with 2D materials,providing researchers with the developing trends in the field and allowing them to identify existing challenges and promising potential solutions.First,the concept and fundamental mechanisms of optical modulation with 2D materials are summarized.Second,a review of waveguide-integrated optical modulators employing electro-optic,all-optic,and thermo-optic effects is provided.Finally,the challenges and perspectives of waveguide-integrated modulators with 2D materials are discussed.

Ridge Waveguide Electro-Optic Polymer Modulator with a New Kind of Corona Poled Crosslinkable Polyurethane

A polymer electro optic modulator has been fabricated with the functional layer acting as a kind of corona poled crosslinkable polyurethane. The three optical layers, namely waveguide, photolithography and oxygen are fabricated by spin coating. With the Reactive Ion Etching method, the ridge of the waveguide is constructed. With light at 1 31μm being fiber coupled to waveguide, the mode and the modulation properties of these devices are demonstrated in a micron control system.

Simultaneous guidance of electromagnetic and elastic waves via glide symmetry phoxonic crystal waveguides

A phoxonic crystal waveguide with the glide symmetry is designed,in which both electromagnetic and elastic waves can propagate along the glide plane at the same time.Due to the glide symmetry,the bands of the phoxonic crystal super-cell degenerate in pairs at the boundary of the Brillouin zone.This is the so-called band-sticking effect and it causes the appearance of gapless guided-modes.By adjusting the magnitude of the glide dislocation the edge bandgaps,the bandgap of the guided-modes at the boundary of the Brillouin zone,can be further adjusted.The photonic and phononic guided-modes can then possess only one mode for a certain frequency with relatively low group velocities,achieving single-mode guided-bands with relatively flat dispersion relationship.In addition,there exists acousto-optic interaction in the cavity constructed by the glide plane.The proposed waveguide has potential applications in the design of novel optomechanical devices.

An Electroabsorption Modulator Monolithically Integrated with a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier and a Dual-Waveguide Spot-Size Converter

A semiconductor optical amplifier and electroabsorption modulator monolithically integrated with a spotsize converter input and output is fabricated by means of selective area growth,quantum well intermixing,and asymmetric twin waveguide technology. A 1550-1600nm lossless operation with a high DC extinction ratio of 25dB and more than 10GHz 3dB bandwidth are successfully achieved. The output beam divergence angles of the device in the horizontal and vertical directions are as small as 7.3°× 18.0°, respectively, resulting in a 3.0dB coupling loss with a cleaved single-mode optical fiber.

Mach-Zehnder Type Annealed Proton Exchange Waveguide and Coplanar Waveguide Modulation Electrode LiNbO_3 Intensity Modulator

The characteristics of a conventional LiNbO3 intensity modulator made up of a Mach-Zehnder(MZ) type annealed proton exchange(APE) waveguide and coplanar waveguide(CPW) modulation electrode are presented. The APE waveguide characteristics and their relations with process parameters are analyzed. At the same time, the electrical characteristics of modulation electrode, such as modulation voltage, microwave effective index associated with modulation bandwidth, characteristics impedance, are also investigated in detail.

Waveguide electro-optic modulators based on self-assembled material systems

Fabrication and characterization of electro-optic modulators based on the novel organic electro-optic materials composed of self-assembled superlattices (SAS) were presented, both wet-dipping self-assembly and vapor phase deposition approaches were discussed. Prototype waveguide electro-optic modulators were fabricated using SAS films integrated with low-loss polymeric materials functioning as partial guiding and cladding layers.Promising electro-optic thin film materials including DTPT and PEPCOOH grown from the vapor phase were used for fabrication and test of electro-optic prototype modulators. Finally,the EO coefficient of tens of pm/V was obtained,which can sufficiently support high-speed and small size EO modulators.

Low-power electro-optic phase modulator based on multilayer graphene/silicon nitride waveguide

Electro-optic modulator is a key component for on-chip optical signal processing.An electro-optic phase modulator based on multilayer graphene embedded in silicon nitride waveguide is demonstrated to fulfill low-power operation.Finite element method is adopted to investigate the interaction enhancement between the graphene flake and the optical mode.The impact of multilayer graphene on the performance of phase modulator is studied comprehensively.Simulation results show that the modulation efficiency improves with the increment of graphene layer number,as well as the modulation length.The 3-dB bandwidth of around 48 GHz is independent of graphene layer number and length.Compared to modulator with two-or four-layer graphene,the six-layer graphene/silicon nitride waveguide modulator can realizeπphase shift at a low-power consumption of 14 fJ/bit when the modulation length is 240μm.

Modulation Depth Based on Frequency-shift Characteristic of LiNbO3 Waveguide Electro-optic Intensity Modulator

The modulation depth, defined according to practical modulation results, which changes with the microwave power and its frequency, is significant for systems utilizing the frequency-shift characteristic of the LiNbO3 waveguide Electro-Optic Intensity Modulator （EOIM）. By analyzing the impedance mismatch between the microwave source and the EOIM, the effective voltage applied to the RF port of the EOIM is deprived from the microwave power and its frequency. Associating with analyses of the phase velocity mismatch between the microwave and the optical wave, the theoretical modulation depth has been obtained, which is verified by experimental results. We provide a method to choose the appropriate modulation depth to optimize the desired sideband through proper transmission bias for the system based on the frequency-shift characteristic of the EOIM.

Strip Waveguide Directional Coupling Modulator with Equivalent Refractive Index

The equivalent refractive index（ERI） method is employed to analyze the function of the strip waveguide directional coupling modulator（SWM）. Through deducing the diagnostic equation of the Exmn mode of the four-layer media film waveguide equivalent to the SWM,the transmission constant of the symmetrical mode of the positive phase and negative one and the coupling length of powerful transference are obtained. The veracity of ERI is validated with the example of Ex11 basal mode under conditions of comparing the three results of ERI,EIM and Marcatili.

Transmission Characteristic Simulation of High Frequency Acousto-Optic Modulators

The way by which one can make sure the operating mode of the modulation is by observing the Comsol results of the designed model of proposed acousto-optic modulator (AOM). These results include the pressure distribution, sound pressure distribution, stress distribution at piezoelectric, far-field analysis that describes the diffracted light orders, and electric potential versus light frequency. Throughout the simulating process of modulator operating using Comsol, it begins when the RF is power by a voltage of 100 V, the light is then split into first ordered diffraction, which implies that the modulator is in the operating mode. The use of semiconductor materials is due to its smaller gap that easily transfers the energy that leads to generating first order diffraction when they provided a voltage power. It mentioned that zero order diffraction indicates the modulator does not run;other orders are appearing with increasing the frequency of light leading to decrease of the efficiency of the modulator performance.

Acousto-optic modulator-based bi-frequency interferometer for quantum technology

We demonstrate a high-performance acousto-optic modulator-based bi-frequency interferometer,which can realize either beating or beating free interference for a single-photon level quantum state.Visibility and optical efficiency of the interferometer are(99.5±0.2)%and(95±1)%,respectively.The phase of the interferometer is actively stabilized by using a dithering phase-locking scheme,where the phase dithering is realized by directly driving the acousto-optic modulators with a specially designed electronic signal.We further demonstrate applications of the interferometer in quantum technology,including bi-frequency coherent combination,frequency tuning,and optical switching.These results show the interferometer is a versatile device for multiple quantum technologies.

Mach-Zehnder Electro-Optic Polymer Modulator with C orona Poled Core Layer

A Mach-Zehnder(MZ) electro-optic(EO) modulator are real iz ed,with three optical layers as polymer materials.The functional layer is the co rona poled crosslinkable polyurethane.The ridge waveguide is fabricated by using the spin-coating,poling,photolithography and oxygen reactive ion etching(RIE) techniques.The mode and the modulation properties of these devices are demonstra ted in a micron control system,while the light source works at the wavelength of 1 31 or 1 55 micron.

Polymer Electro-optic Modulator Linear Bias Using the Thermo-optic Effect

A quasi-rectangular waveguide polymer MacH^(-)Zehnder (M-Z) electro-optic (EO) modulator based on an organic/inorganic hybrid material with thermal bias control is fabricated and demonstrated.Linear bias for the modulator is obtained through thermo-optic effect.The optical output is adjusted by changing phase difference between the two arms of the M-Z interferometer.A power consumption of 16.1 m W for π phase change is observed owing to the application of silica cladding.This approach is proved to be effective to suppress direct current drift in polymer EO modulators.

Spectral analysis of the UFBG-based acousto optical modulator in V–I transmission matrix formalism

In this study, the V-I transmission matrix formalism （V-I method） is proposed to analyze the spectrum characteristics of the uniform fiber Bragg grating （FBG）-based acousto--opfic modulators （UFBG-AOM）. The simulation results demon- strate that both the amplitude of the acoustically induced strain and the frequency of the acoustic wave （AW） have an effect on the spectrum. Additionally, the wavelength spacing between the primary reflectivity peak and the secondary reflectivity peak is proportional to the acoustic frequency with the ratio 0.1425 nm/MHz. Meanwhile, we compare the amount of calculation. For the FBG whose period is M, the calculation of the V-I method is 4 × （2M-l） in addition/subtraction, 8 × （2M - 1） in multiply/division and 2M in exponent arithmetic, which is almost a quarter of the multi-film method and transfer matrix （TM） method. The detailed analysis indicates that, compared with the conventional multi-film method and transfer matrix （TM） method, the V-I method is faster and less complex.

Theoretical Studies of the Output Pulse with Variation of the Pumping Pulse for RF Excited CO_2 Pulsed Waveguide Laser

The behavior of a RF-excited waveguide CO2 laser in the pulse regime is studied theoretically. The output pulse evolution is studied by applying three types of pulses namely the square, sine and the triangular ones as the excitation pulses. The frequency dependence behavior of the output pulse is also presented.

Serrated periodic electrode for high energy efficiency and large bandwidth acousto-optic modulators

In an acousto-optic modulator,the electrode shape plays an important role in performance,since it affects the distribution of the acoustic field.The acousto-optic modulator based on the conventional rectangular electrode has the problems of low energy efficiency and small modulation bandwidth due to an imperfect acoustic field.In this paper,a new serrated periodic electrode has been proposed for using acousto-optic modulator transducers.The proposed electrode has the following advantages.By using serrated periodic electrodes to suppress the sidelobes,the collimation of the acoustic field in the direction perpendicular to the light incidence is improved.This makes the acousto-optic modulator have a stable diffraction efficiency fluctuation and high energy efficiency.In addition,the electrode has a large divergence angle in the direction of light incidence,so a large bandwidth can be obtained.The simulations and experiments demonstrate that the serrated periodic electrode has an increased bandwidth and high energy efficiency.

Acousto-optic Devices: Theory and Applications

The basics and applications of acousto-optic devices are described.The applications include acousto-optic spectrum analyzer,acousto-optic deflector,acousto-optic processors and acousto-optic digital matrix computer.

Recent Progress in Silicon Electro-optic Modulators for High Speed Applications

Silicon-based high-speed electro-optical modulator is the key component of silicon photonics for future communiction and interconnection systems. In this paper, introduced are the optical mudulation mechanisms in silicon, reviewed are some recent progresses in high-speed silicon modulators, and analyzed are advantages and shortages of the silicon modulators of different types.

Efficient evanescent coupling design for GeSi electro-absorption modulator

Efficient coupling from the silicon waveguide to the GeSi layer is the key to success in the GeSi electro-absorption （EA） modulator based on evanescent coupling. A lateral taper in the upper GeSi layer has room for increasing the modulating efficiency and alleviating the sensitivity of the extinction ratio （ER） and insertion loss （IL） to the length of the active region. The light behavior and the effect of the taper are explored in detail using the beam propagation method （BPM）. After optimization, the light can nearly be totally confined in the GeSi layer without any oscillation. The modulator with the designed taper can achieve low IL and high ER.

Mid-infrared lightly Er^(3+)-doped CaF_(2)laser under acousto–optical modulation

A 1.7-at.%Er:CaF_(2)crystal was synthesized by temperature gradient method.The Er:CaF_(2)crystal was applied in acousto-optically Q-switched laser at mid-infrared region for the first time.Using a Te O_(2)-based crystal as Q-switcher,we obtained a laser diode(LD)end-pumped Er:CaF_(2)laser with the highest single pulse energy up to 0.49 mJ and maximum peak power of 0.56 kW under 6.34-W absorbed pump power.The implication of these results is that the low-doped Er:CaF_(2)crystal exhibits promising optical properties in solid-state lasers.