A hybrid electro-optic polymer and TiO2 double-slot waveguide modulator

Feng Qiu; Andrew M Spring; Daisuke Maeda; Masa-aki Ozawa; Keisuke Odoi; Akira Otomo; Isao Aoki; Shiyoshi Yokoyama

doi:10.1038/srep08561

A hybrid electro-optic polymer and TiO2 double-slot waveguide modulator

Sci Rep. 2015 Feb 24:5:8561. doi: 10.1038/srep08561.

Authors

Feng Qiu¹, Andrew M Spring¹, Daisuke Maeda², Masa-aki Ozawa², Keisuke Odoi², Akira Otomo³, Isao Aoki³, Shiyoshi Yokoyama¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering, Kyushu University, 6-1 Kasuga-koen Kasuga-city, Fukuoka, 816-8580 Japan.
² Nissan Chemical Industries, LTD, 2-10-1 Tuboi Nishi, Funabashi, Chiba 274-8507, Japan.
³ National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 588-2 Iwaoka, Nishi-ku, Kobe 651-2492, Japan.

Abstract

An electro-optic (EO) modulator using a TiO2 slot hybrid waveguide has been designed and fabricated. Optical mode calculations revealed that the mode was primarily confined within the slots when using a double-slot configuration, thus achieving a high EO activity experimentally. The TiO2 slots also acted as an important barrier to induce an enhanced DC field during the poling of the EO polymer and the driving of the EO modulator. The hybrid phase modulator exhibited a driving voltage (Vπ) of 1.6 V at 1550 nm, which can be further reduced to 0.8 V in a 1 cm-long push-pull Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure. The modulator demonstrated a low propagation loss of 5 dB/cm and a relatively high end-fire coupling efficiency.

Publication types

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