A NEW MATERIAL AND DEVICE PLATFORM FOR COMPACT, HIGH-GAIN INTEGRATED PHOTONIC MODULATOR TECHNOLOGY
Abstract
?Proposal Summary: A New Material and Device Platform for Compact, High-gain Integrated Photonic Modulator Technology The goal of this program is to develop compact, wide-band, and high-gain modulators for RF photonics (and millimeter-wave photonics) applications. We propose to develop a new material platform and device technology to achieve high-speed modulators with bandwidths higher than 100 GHz that can achieve high effective RF gains (10-20 dB voltage gain). Our goal in this proposal is to address the main shortcomings of the current modulator technologies (e.g., based on Mach-Zehnder LiNbO3 interferometers, Si-based interferometers, polymer-infiltrated silicon slots, etc.) for achieving wideband and high-gain modulators by integrating several innovative ideas in modulator architecture, device design, and material platform. While most of the existing efforts focus on one of these issues (material platform, device design, or architecture optimization), we propose to develop new solutions for all three aspects so that the improvements achieved in each aspect collectively provide the target performance measures. Our final goal in this proposal is to achieve very high modulator sensitivity, while preserving the high bandwidth and high power handling capability of the modulator to achieve the required target high-gain modulators. The proposed modulators will be formed in a novel hybrid multi-layer functional material platform that includes layers of high-quality CMOS-compatible materials properly integrated with strong electro-optic materials with efficient light coupling between different layers to enable high power handling, very low loss, and strong electro-optic effect along with the capability of engineering nanophotonic devices with strong overlap between optical and electrical fields for highly sensitive modulation. In addition, the use of a novel resonance-enhanced interferometer architecture dramatically reduces the required modulating voltage to further increase the modulation sensitivity. As such, the expected performance of the proposed modulators surpasses that of the existing modulators by a large margin. In addition, especial attention is given to the optimization of coupling mechanisms in the proposed system at all levels (input/output coupling to fibers, coupling between different layers in the multi-layer material platform, coupling of different elements (e.g., waveguides and resonators)) to minimize the overall coupling-induced insertion loss to 1-2 dB. The proposed tasks are carefully designed to address all materials, device, and architecture requirements of these modulators. They combine theoretical design and optimization of photonic devices using in-house simulation tools, process optimization for material growth and device fabrication, architecture optimization, and detailed characterization of the fabricated devices. The high gain of the proposed modulators allows for removing the low-noise amplifiers from the wireless communication systems and makes the direct integration of the wireless antennas and the millimeter-wave/photonic (or RF/photonic) information processing modules possible. By bringing the millimeter-wave signal to the optical domain using a fast modulator, its processing (e.g., filtering, delay equalization, etc.) can be performed in a very small footprint in the optical domain using an integrated photonic structure. This will be a major breakthrough for enabling next-generation signal processing chips and transceivers for the rapidly growing millimeter-wave communication systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 20, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141512081
Entities
People
- Ali Adibi
Organizations
- Georgia Tech Research Corporation
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy