Design of a single all-silicon ring resonator with a 150 nm free spectral range and a 100 nm tuning range around 1550 nm

Abstract

We present a novel and simple method to obtain an ultrawide free spectral range (FSR) silicon ring resonator together with a tuning range covering the entire spectrum from 1500 to 1600 nm. A ring resonator with a large FSR together with a high Q factor, high tuning efficiency, and low fabrication cost and complexity is desired for many applications. In this paper, we introduce a novel way to make such a ring resonator, which takes advantage of the well-known resonance-splitting phenomenon. It is a single ring resonator with an FSR of more than 150 nm around 1550 nm and which has an easy thermo-optic tunability that can produce a tuning range around 90 nm or even more. Moreover, the device is simple to implement and can be fabricated in standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology without requiring any kind of complicated processing or extra materials. The potential applications include single mode laser cavities, wavelength division multiplexing filters, (de)multiplexers, optical sensors, and integrated reflectors.