Abstract
We report a carrier-depletion silicon Mach–Zehnder optical modulator with large optical bandwidth
by adopting two symmetric arms. The fiber-to-fiber loss of the device is about 7.2–8 dB in the wavelength
range from 1525 to 1565 nm. We have used the truncation method to accurately measure the loss of the optical
splitter and combiner, and the on-chip loss is about 3.8 dB. The dynamic extinction ratios at the speed of
40 Gb/s are 4.9–6.4 dB in the wavelength range from 1529 to 1565 nm. By analyzing the dependence
of the optical bandwidth on the optical path difference between the two arms, we find that there is an unexpected
optical path difference of around 3.3 μm between the two arms, which is considered to originate from the
nonuniform morphologies of the waveguide and the nonuniform doping profiles along the two arms and is responsible for
the slight wavelength dependence of the static and dynamic response of the silicon Mach–Zehnder optical
modulator.
© 2013 IEEE
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