Highly efficient CW parametric conversion at 1550 nm in SOI waveguides by reverse biased p-i-n junction

In this paper we present four-wave mixing (FWM) based parametric conversion experiments in p-i-n diode assisted silicon-on-insulator (SOI) nano-rib waveguides using continuous-wave (CW) light around 1550 nm wavelength. Using a reverse biased p-i-n waveguide diode we observe an increase of the wavelength conversion efficiency of more than 4.5 dB compared to low loss nano-rib waveguides without p-i-n junction, achieving a peak efficiency of -1 dB. Conversion efficiency improves also by more than 7 dB compared to previously reported experiments deploying 1.5 mu m SOI waveguides with p-i-n structure. To the best of our knowledge, the observed peak conversion efficiency of -1dB is the highest CW efficiency in SOI reported so far. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America