Ultracompact tapered coupler for the Si/III-V heterogeneous integration

Appl Opt. 2015 May 10;54(14):4327-32. doi: 10.1364/AO.54.004327.

Abstract

An ultracompact tapered coupler, which is suitable for mode transformation between a 220 nm high silicon wire waveguide and a Si/III-V hybrid waveguide, is proposed for Si/III-V heterogeneous integration. The tapered coupler is composed of three sections. Since the tapered coupler avoids exciting the unwanted high-order modes in the III-V waveguide, the length of the tapered coupler can be dramatically shortened. In the proposed structure, the total length of the trisectional tapered coupler can be as short as 8 μm with a fundamental mode-coupling efficiency of over 95% in a bandwidth of over 100 nm. The alignment tolerance of the proposed structure is also analyzed.