Very High Speed Polymeric External Modulator with more than 40 GHz of 3-dB Electrical Bandwidth and Low Drive Voltage ,
Abstract
Nonlinear optical (NLO) polymers offer unique advantages for high speed device applications by virtue of their low dielectric constants and the near perfect velocity matching between the optical and microwave wavevectors. In this paper, we report on the demonstration of a very high speed (> 40 GHz of 3-dB electrical bandwidth) electrooptic Mach Zehnder intensity modulator in a nonlinear optical polymer developed by Hoechst Celanese. The optical Mach Zehnder circuit was formed by spin coating a three layer NLO polymer structure (two claddings and waveguide) to a total thickness of 6.5 um on an electroplated Si wafer, and subsequent photo-bleaching for the definition of the optical guiding circuit yielding single mode operation at 1.3 micrometer. To induce the electrooptic effect, the device is poled (in the TM polarization) at a high electric field near the glass transition temperature of the polymer. The device utilizes a 12mm long gold-plated microstrip line applied to one arm of the Mach-Zehnder modulator. RF power is coupled in and out of the microstrip line through two 5mm long tapered coplanar waveguides and K connectors. The measured RF input coupling loss to the microstrip line was below 0.9 dB up to 40 GHz.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADP008153
Entities
People
- Chu C. Teng
- M. G. Scaturo
- T. K. Findakly