Permeability-controlled optical modulator with Tri-gate metamaterial: control of permeability on InP-based photonic integration platform

Tomohiro Amemiya; Atsushi Ishikawa; Toru Kanazawa; JoonHyung Kang; Nobuhiko Nishiyama; Yasuyuki Miyamoto; Takuo Tanaka; Shigehisa Arai

doi:10.1038/srep08985

Permeability-controlled optical modulator with Tri-gate metamaterial: control of permeability on InP-based photonic integration platform

Sci Rep. 2015 Mar 23:5:8985. doi: 10.1038/srep08985.

Authors

Tomohiro Amemiya¹, Atsushi Ishikawa², Toru Kanazawa³, JoonHyung Kang⁴, Nobuhiko Nishiyama⁴, Yasuyuki Miyamoto³, Takuo Tanaka⁵, Shigehisa Arai⁶

Affiliations

¹ 1] Quantum Nanoelectronics Research Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan [2] RIKEN Metamaterials Laboratory, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
² 1] RIKEN Metamaterials Laboratory, Saitama 351-0198, Japan [2] Department of Electrical &Electronic Engineering, Okayama University, Okayama 700-8530, Japan.
³ Department of Physical Electronics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan.
⁵ 1] RIKEN Metamaterials Laboratory, Saitama 351-0198, Japan [2] Department of Innovative and Engineered Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Kanagawa 226-8502, Japan [3] Research Institute for Electronic Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 001-0020, Japan.
⁶ 1] Quantum Nanoelectronics Research Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan [2] Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan.

Abstract

Metamaterials are artificially structured materials that can produce innovative optical functionalities such as negative refractive index, invisibility cloaking, and super-resolution imaging. Combining metamaterials with semiconductors enables us to develop novel optoelectronic devices based on the new concept of operation. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of a permeability-controlled waveguide optical modulator consisting of an InGaAsP/InP Mach-Zehnder interferometer with 'tri-gate' metamaterial attached on its arms. The tri-gate metamaterial consists of metal resonator arrays and triple-gate field effect elements. It changes its permeability with a change in the controlling gate voltage, thereby changing the refractive index of the interferometer arm to switch the modulator with an extinction ratio of 6.9 dB at a wavelength of 1.55 μm. The result shows the feasibility of InP-based photonic integrated devices that can produce new functions by controlling their permeability as well as their permittivity.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't