Integrated O- and C-band silicon-lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder modulators with 100 GHz bandwidth, low voltage, and low loss
Forrest Valdez, Viphretuo Mere, Xiaoxi Wang, Shayan Mookherjea
Abstract
Broadband integrated thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) electro-optic modulators (EOM) are desirable for optical communications and signal processing in both the O-band (1310 nm) and C-band (1550 nm). To address these needs, we design and demonstrate Mach-Zehnder (MZ) EOM devices in a hybrid platform based on TFLN bonded to foundry-fabricated silicon photonic waveguides. Using a single silicon lithography step and a single bonding step, we realize MZ EOM devices which cover both wavelength ranges on the same chip. The EOM devices achieve 100 GHz EO bandwidth (referenced to 1 GHz) and about 2-3 V.cm figure-of-merit ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>V</mml:mi> <mml:mi>π</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mi>L</mml:mi> </mml:math> ) with low on-chip optical loss in both the O-band and C-band.