Efficient fiber-to-chip grating coupler for micrometric SOI rib waveguides

Grating couplers are an efficient means for fiber to chip coupling, as they require no facet preparation and enable wafer scale testing. While grating couplers are commonly used in silicon wire waveguides, their application to micrometric silicon-on-insulator rib waveguides is complicated due to the presence of high-order Bloch modes. We study the Bloch modes behavior and their excitation determined by access waveguide design. The latter is implemented to enable single Bloch mode excitation. The use of a design process based on modal analysis is proposed. A grating coupler is proposed in silicon-on-insulator with 1.5 mu m thick silicon layer that achieves a coupling efficiency of 65.6% at 1.55 mu m. The structure, including interconnection waveguides, access waveguide and grating can be fabricated using a single lithography step. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America