Microring Optical Phase-Shifters With Low Driving-Voltage, Low Insertion Loss, and Small Residual Amplitude Modulation

Novel microring based optical phase-shifters on Si-photonic platforms for microwave photonic applications are demonstrated. By using an add-drop microring structure in combination with an additional multimode interferometer (MMI), pure phase modulation with an ultrahigh modulation efficiency can be realized. Comparison is made to the reference all-pass ring design with both the same radius (5 mu m) and coupling coefficient (kappa: similar to 0.2). The demonstrated structure minimizes the residual amplitude modulation (0.9 vs. 1.8 dB) for nearly 2 pi phase shifting over a wide optical window (1520 to 1570 nm) at the expense of a larger insertion loss (0.06 dB) due to the additional MMI. The demonstrated phase shifter structure is implemented in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for further study of its dynamic and linearity performance. Under forward bias, it exhibits a low V-pi/I-pi (0.4 V/12.7 mA), fast rise-time (3 ns), low insertion loss (0.2 dB), low residue-amplitude-modulations (<0.9 dB), and can cover wide optical windows (1560-1568 nm) with a small footprint (37x37 mu m(2)). The measured spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR: 70-75 dB) of our novel phase shifter-based MZI is comparable to that of the traditional traveling-wave MZI (similar to 75 dB) under reverse bias and tested using the same setup.

Automated summary

Novel microring-based optical phase-shifters on Si-photonic platforms for microwave photonic applications were demonstrated in this study. The combination of an add-drop microring structure with an additional multimode interferometer showed pure phase modulation with ultrahigh efficiency. Comparison with a reference all-pass ring design revealed that the demonstrated structure minimizes residual amplitude modulation for nearly 2 pi phase shifting over a wide optical window, at the expense of larger insertion loss.