Development of an All Silicon Integrated Optical Modulator for High Speed Data Communications and Sensor Applications
Abstract
The first generation silicon light intensity modulator had a modulation depth of up to 30% in a bandwidth up to 200 MHz in accordance with the intents of the project, the modulator occupied a small surface area and is fabricated using standard silicon technology, making the modulator suitable for integration with silicon integrated circuits. The second generation of the modulator had several refinements, among which the push-pull design proved to be the most worth while, giving a doubling of the modulation depth. In the design of the modulator special emphasis was put on easy interfacing with fiber optics, and it was demonstrated that the modulator could not only simply and inexpensively be directly coupled to single mode optical fibers (pigtailing), but that the direct coupling of the modulators was more effective and led to a higher modulation index (24%) and lower insertion loss (5dB) even without a anti reflection coating. During the course of the project related areas of interest in device research has been discovered. Among these, electro-optic polymers for high speed modulators and integrated circuit probes have received the most attention so far. A new guest/host system of purely commercially available chemicals had been developed and basic material characteristics in the 1 to 100 GHz are being measured. A more recent research effort that has come out of this project is the investigation of the use of the plasma effect in semiconductors for mode locking of solid state lasers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 31, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA220270
Entities
People
- A. A. Godil
- B. R. Hemenway
- D. M. Bloom
- J. I. Thackara
- O. Solgaard
Organizations
- Stanford University