High-Speed Modulator With Integrated Termination Resistor Based on Hybrid Silicon and Lithium Niobate Platform

Abstract

Hybrid Silicon and Lithium Niobate photonic integration platform has emerged as a promising candidate to combine the scalability of silicon photonic with the high modulation performance of Lithium Niobate. Here, we report a hybrid Silicon and Lithium Niobate Mach-Zehnder modulator integrated with a thermal-optical bias controller and an on-chip RF terminator. The device demonstrates high electro-optical bandwidth of up to 60 GHz, low half-wave voltage of 2.25 V, and low optical on-chip loss of 2 dB, DC biasing half-wave voltage of 1.93 V (or biasing power of 23.77 mW), with reliable and stable biasing characteristics. On-off keying modulation up to 100 Gbit/s and four-level pulse amplitude modulation up to 120 Gbit/s has been demonstrated with excellent performance. The scheme, with its low modulation voltage, low biasing power consumption, low optical insertion loss, large bandwidth, and its flexibility and simplicity of designing, packaging, and testing, can provide an excellent platform on which future high performance complex optical modulators can be developed.