Low-power and high-speed 2 x 2 thermo-optic MMI-MZI switch with suspended phase arms and heater-on-slab structure

We propose a 2 x 2 thermo-optic switch with high switching performance. The switch is based on multimode interferometer (MMI) couplers and a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure, where the phase arms are designed as laterally supported suspended ridge waveguides (LSSRWs) with a metallic heater placed on the slab. It is experimentally demonstrated that this switch has a power consumption of 1.07 mW, a thermal time constant similar to 4.7 mu s, an extinction ratio similar to 30 dB, and an insertion loss similar to 0.5 dB. Particularly, the corresponding figure of merit (FOM) has been improved. by 1 order magnitude compared with general thermo-optic switches. This 2 x 2 thermo-optic MMI-MZI switch may find potential application for network reconfiguration and on-chip optical information processing. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America

Automated summary

The proposed 2x2 thermo-optic switch is based on MMI and MZI structures, with high switching performance and low power consumption. Compared with general thermo-optic switches, it has lower power consumption, faster response time, and superior performance.