CMOS-Compatible Photonic Phase Shifters With Extremely Low Thermal Crosstalk Performance

Abstract

We report a thorough analysis of the thermal crosstalk issue for silicon photonic circuits using metal and doped silicon heaters for the two waveguide configurations, rib and strip waveguides. Full-wave thermal and optical simulations are performed and it is observed that integrated doped heaters with strip waveguides have the best thermal crosstalk performance. Also, the effect of metal contacts on the heater power consumption is investigated. Furthermore, to alleviate the phase crosstalk and improve the phase tuning efficiency, a deep trench is implemented to thermally shield an adjacent waveguide. Two well-known photonic components, namely, integrated Mach-Zehnder modulators and PN phase shifters are designed and the thermal crosstalk performance is analyzed rigorously. The proposed photonic phase shifter is outperformed in terms of thermal crosstalk over the existing designs. Such phase shifters are viable for compact silicon photonic circuits operating at a very high temperature.