High performance thin-film lithium niobate modulator on a silicon substrate using periodic capacitively loaded traveling-wave electrode

Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) based traveling-wave modulators maintain simultaneously excellent performances, including large modulation bandwidth, high extinction ratio, low optical loss, and high modulation efficiency. Nevertheless, there still exists a balance between the driving voltage and modulation bandwidth. Here, we demonstrate an ultra-large bandwidth electro-optic modulator without compromising the driving voltage based on the TFLN platform on a silicon substrate, using a periodic capacitively loaded traveling-wave electrode. In order to compensate the slow-wave effect, an undercut etching technique for the silicon substrate is introduced to decrease the microwave refractive index. Our demonstrated devices represent both low optical and low microwave losses, which leads to a negligible optical insertion loss of 0.2 dB and a large electro-optic bandwidth with a roll-off of 1.4 dB at 67 GHz for a 10 mm-long device. A low half-wave voltage of 2.2 V is also achieved. Data rates up to 112 Gb s(-1) with PAM-4 modulation are demonstrated. The compatibility of the proposed modulator to silicon photonics facilitates its integration with matured silicon photonic components using, e.g., hybrid integration technologies. (c) 2022 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study demonstrates an ultra-large bandwidth electro-optic modulator based on the thin-film lithium niobate platform, which does not compromise the driving voltage and exhibits low loss and high bandwidth. By introducing a special etching technique and a traveling-wave electrode design, excellent performance is achieved.