A wide-band polymeric electro-optic modulator array based on unidirectional coupling between multi-mode waveguide array and a vertical configured dumping planar waveguide

Abstract

A polymeric wide-band electro-optic (EO) modulator array based on unidirectional mode-coupling between the guiding multi-mode waveguide array and a vertical configured planar dumping waveguide was developed. A low insertion loss of <1.7 dB was obtained due to asymmetrically designed guiding waveguide and the dumping waveguide. A modulation depth of 91% was achieved with the device length of 3.5 cm at a low driving voltage of 3.2 V. The employment of the dumping planar waveguide not only provides an efficient way to achieve the unidirectional coupling mechanism, but also effectively confines the light coupled from the guiding waveguides within the planar dumping waveguide. The combination of unidirectional coupling and light confinement effects ensures low cross talk of <22 dB between adjacent guiding waveguides. Since the proposed modulator is based on the unidirectional coupling mechanism, it is intrinsically wide-band. A wide-band operation from 1308 to 1324 nm was experimentally obtained. The unidirectional mode-coupling-based wide-band modulation principle can be readily applied to other wavelengths, such as 1330 and 1550 nm ranges.