50-Gb/s silicon optical modulator with traveling-wave electrodes

We demonstrate silicon Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) optical modulator with 50.1-Gb/s data rate and 5.56 dB dynamic extinction ratios. The phase shifter is composed by a 4 mm-long reverse-biased p-n junction with a modulation efficiency (V-pi.L-pi) of similar to 26.7 V.mm and phase shifter loss of similar to 1.04 dB/mm at V-bias = -6 V. The measured electro-optic bandwidth reaches 25.6 GHz at V-bias = -5 V. Compensation doping method and low loss traveling-wave electrodes are utilized to improve the modulator performance. Measurement result demonstrates that reasonable choosing of working point and doping profile of the silicon optical modulator is critical in order to match the performance requirement of the real application. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America