Passive Temperature Stabilization of Silicon Photonic Devices Using Liquid Crystals

Joanna Ptasinski; Iam-Choon Khoo; Yeshaiahu Fainman

doi:10.3390/ma7032229

Passive Temperature Stabilization of Silicon Photonic Devices Using Liquid Crystals

Materials (Basel). 2014 Mar 14;7(3):2229-2241. doi: 10.3390/ma7032229.

Authors

Joanna Ptasinski^{1

2}, Iam-Choon Khoo³, Yeshaiahu Fainman⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. jptasins@ucsd.edu.
² Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, San Diego, CA 92152, USA. jptasins@ucsd.edu.
³ Electrical Engineering Department, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. ick1@psu.edu.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. fainman@ece.ucsd.edu.

Abstract

In this work we explore the negative thermo-optic properties of liquid crystal claddings for passive temperature stabilization of silicon photonic integrated circuits. Photonic circuits are playing an increasing role in communications and computing, but they suffer from temperature dependent performance variation. Most existing techniques aimed at compensation of thermal effects rely on power hungry Joule heating. We show that integrating a liquid crystal cladding helps to minimize the effects of a temperature dependent drift. The advantage of liquid crystals lies in their high negative thermo-optic coefficients in addition to low absorption at the infrared wavelengths.

Keywords: liquid crystals; passive tuning; ring resonator; silicon photonics; thermal stabilization; thermo-optic coefficient.