Integrated Lithium Niobate Intensity Modulator on a Silicon Handle With Slow-Wave Electrodes
Sean Nelan, Andrew Mercante, Shouyuan Shi, Peng Yao, Eliezer Shahid, Benjamin Shopp, Dennis W. Prather
Abstract
Segmented, or slow-wave electrodes have emerged as an index-matching solution to improve bandwidth of traveling-wave Mach Zehnder (MZM) and phase modulators on the thin-film lithium niobate on insulator platform. However, these devices require the use of a quartz handle or substrate removal, adding cost and additional processing. In this work, a high-speed dual-output electro-optic intensity modulator in the thin-film silicon nitride and lithium niobate material system that uses segmented electrodes for RF and optical index matching is presented. The device uses a silicon handle and does not require substrate removal. A silicon handle allows the use of larger wafer sizes to increase yield, and lends itself to processing in established silicon foundries that may not have the capability to process a quartz or fused silica wafer. The balanced MZM has an interaction region of 10 mm, shows a DC half wave voltage of 3.75 V with a 92 mW <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{P}\pi $ </tex-math></inline-formula> , an ultra-high extinction ratio of roughly 45 dB consistent with previous work, and a fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 7.47 dB with a 95 GHz 3 dB bandwidth.