Abstract

The growing needs of higher data processing speeds and bandwidth has prompted the interest in the research and development of low energy silicon optical interconnects. A modulator is an important component of the interconnect and hence development of an energy efficient modulator is important to keep the total energy consumption low. In the present work, we demonstrate a carrier injection silicon electro-optic modulator operating with the lowest reported switching and holding energies. The energy consumption was lowered by reducing the resistance and capacitance of the device by using a small footprint 1D photonic crystal cavity. We used a mode gap 1D silicon photonic crystal cavity having a width of only 600 nm and a loaded Q-factor of 20K. Complete details of the cavity design can be found in our previous report [1]. A small pin junction was created across the cavity with p and n doped fingers formed by ion implantation in the 50 nm thick side slabs. The schematic of the device with physical dimensions is shown in Fig 1.

© 2014 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America