Abstract
Silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) utilizing carrier depletion usually adopt traveling-wave (TW) electrodes for their long phase shifters, which have inherent challenges in miniaturization, limiting the integration density of monolithic transceivers. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate non-TW carrier-depletion MZMs that give better compromises between compact footprint, modulation depth, and high speed. They adopt densely meandered phase shifters and thus offer an ultra-compact lumped-element MZM for using carrier depletion. Up to 28.1 Gb/s NRZ eye diagrams and ~26 GHz electro-optic bandwidth were experimentally achieved. The proposed lumped circuit model well explains the experimental data, indicating that impedance mismatching is the dominant factor in determining experimental bandwidth and a LC resonance contributes to the bandwidth improvement. Driving configurations with better impedance matching are proposed to further improve bandwidth. This novel MZM can enhance the integration density of modulators in wavelength-division multiplexing transceivers.
Highlights
Optical transceivers are continuously miniaturized for low-cost, low-power, and high-density optical interconnects [1]
In [24], using the same concept as that in [14], we experimentally demonstrated a non-traveling-wave (NTW) Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) (NTWMZM) by employing a densely meandered phase shifter, which for the first time reported the experimental results of a lumped-element MZM modulator based on carrier depletion without utilizing slow-light effects [7,8], as far as we know
We study the impedance matching with considering the effect of LC resonance on bandwidth since in our experiment we found the inductance of comb-like electrodes can contribute to bandwidth enhancement via inducing a LC resonance
Summary
Optical transceivers are continuously miniaturized for low-cost, low-power, and high-density optical interconnects [1]. With such a phase shifter design, we can realize a lumped-element carrier-depletion MZM with both a small footprint and a reasonable length of phase shifter. Note that the S electrodes are connecting to the n-side of diodes
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