Theoretical study of a cross-waveguide resonator-based silicon electro-optic modulator with low power consumption

Abstract

A cross-waveguide resonator structure is proposed for silicon electro-optic modulators operating around the near-infrared (NIR) communication wavelength of 1550 nm. The device is modeled based on a silicon-on- insulator wafer with a compact surface area of 16 μm2 (4 μm × 4 μm) and the modulation is achieved by resonance peak shift caused by carrier injection-based refractive index perturbation. It is shown via numerical study that the modulation speed of the device hits 2.9 GHz and 3 dB frequency around 4 GHz, while the DC power consumption is only 17.3 mW. An optimum modulation depth of 5.7 dB was found after tuning the optical confinement of the cavity. © 2009 Optical Society of America.