Antenna-coupled silicon-organic hybrid integrated photonic crystal modulator for broadband electromagnetic wave detection

Abstract

The detection and measurement of electromagnetic fields have attracted significant amounts of attention in recent years. Traditional electronic electromagnetic field sensors use large active conductive probes which perturb the field to be measured and also make the devices bulky. In order to address these problems, integrated photonic electromagnetic field sensors have been developed, in which an optical signal is modulated by an RF signal collected by a miniaturized antenna. In this work, we design, fabricate and characterize a compact, broadband and highly sensitive integrated photonic electromagnetic field sensor based on a silicon-organic hybrid modulator driven by a bowtie antenna. The large electro-optic (EO) coefficient of organic polymer, the slow-light effects in the silicon slot photonic crystal waveguide (PCW), and the broadband field enhancement provided by the bowtie antenna, are all combined to enhance the interaction of microwaves and optical waves, enabling a high EO modulation efficiency and thus a high sensitivity. The modulator is experimentally demonstrated with a record-high effective in-device EO modulation efficiency of r₃₃=1230pm/V. Modulation response up to 40GHz is measured, with a 3-dB bandwidth of 11GHz. The slot PCW has an interaction length of 300μm, and the bowtie antenna has an area smaller than 1cm². The bowtie antenna in the device is experimentally demonstrated to have a broadband characteristics with a central resonance frequency of 10GHz, as well as a large beam width which enables the detection of electromagnetic waves from a large range of incident angles. The sensor is experimentally demonstrated with a minimum detectable electromagnetic power density of 8.4mW/m² at 8.4GHz, corresponding to a minimum detectable electric field of 2.5V/m and an ultra-high sensitivity of 0.000027V/m Hz^-1/2 ever demonstrated. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first silicon-organic hybrid device and also the first PCW device used for the photonic detection of electromagnetic waves. Finally, we propose some future work, including a Teraherz wave sensor based on antenna-coupled electrooptic polymer filled plasmonic slot waveguide, as well as a fully packaged and tailgated device.