Abstract
A novel fabrication process has been developed for fabricating undercut-etched electroabsorption modulators that are compatible with tunable lasers. This process allows for the incorporation of highly doped p-type InGaAs above the upper cladding as an ohmic contact layer. The EAM demonstrates significant improvement in the microwave performance with little effect on modulation efficiency due to the undercut etching. This device uses a traveling wave electrode design with an integrated, matched termination resistor to demonstrate a 34 GHz 3-dB bandwidth for a 600 microm long modulator.
Highlights
Traveling-wave electroabsorption modulators (EAMs) in InP-based materials are attractive devices for optical fiber communications due to their compact size, high speed, and low drive voltage
A novel fabrication process has been developed for fabricating undercut-etched electroabsorption modulators that are compatible with tunable lasers
This process allows for the incorporation of highly doped p-type InGaAs above the upper cladding as an ohmic contact layer
Summary
Traveling-wave electroabsorption modulators (EAMs) in InP-based materials are attractive devices for optical fiber communications due to their compact size, high speed, and low drive voltage These devices are very well suited for monolithic integration with semiconductor lasers, allowing for minimal coupling loss and simple packaging of single-chip transmitters [1, 2, 3]. Since InGaAs is susceptible to the same wet etch chemistries as InAlGaAs and InGaAsP, undercut EAMs have previously been limited to using highly doped p-InP instead as the upper metallization interface This type of contact scheme is not ideal for integration with forward biased devices such as semiconductor lasers, because high-resistance contacts can lead to excess heat generation and lower optical output power. The dynamic extinction ratio for this device is 6.0 dB with a 1.6 V drive
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