Maximizing Fabrication and Thermal Tolerances of All-Silicon FIR Wavelength Filters

Abstract

We propose a method to make silicon optical finite impulse response filters tolerant to fabrication (waveguide geometry) and ambient thermal variations. We experimentally demonstrate a Mach-Zehnder interferometer filter with fabrication and thermal tolerance, both separately and together. The fabrication-tolerant device measurements show a 20-fold improved tolerance to systematic waveguide linewidth variations with a wavelength shift of <;60 pm/nm linewidth change. The fabrication- and thermal-tolerant device is possible using orthogonal polarizations in the two arms. The fabricated device shows a shift of less than ±65 pm/nm and a thermal drift smaller than ±15 pm/K over a wavelength range of 40 nm. Simulations show that this concept can be extended to multichannel filters.