Wideband thin-film lithium niobate modulator with low half-wave-voltage length product

Abstract

A novel thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) electro-optic modulator is proposed and demonstrated. LiNbO3-silica hybrid waveguide is adopted to maintain low optical loss for an electrode spacing as narrow as 3 µm, resulting in a low half-wave-voltage length product of only 1.7 V·cm. Capacitively loaded traveling-wave electrodes are employed to reduce the microwave loss, while a quartz substrate is used in place of a silicon substrate to achieve velocity matching. The fabricated TFLN modulator with a 5-mm-long modulation region exhibits a half-wave voltage of 3.4 V and a merely less than 2 dB roll-off in an electro-optic response up to 67 GHz.