CMOS-compatible athermal silicon microring resonators

We propose a new class of resonant silicon optical devices, consisting of a ring resonator coupled to a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which is passively temperature compensated by tailoring the optical mode confinement in the waveguides. We demonstrate operation of the device over a wide temperature range of 80 degrees. The fundamental principle behind this work can be extended to other photonic devices based on resonators such as modulators, routers, switches and filters. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America