Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 China.
1] Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 China [2] State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012 China.
Sci Rep. 2015 May 13;5:10190. doi: 10.1038/srep10190.
On-chip photonic circuits of different specific functions are highly desirable and becoming significant demands in all-optical communication network. Especially, the function to control the transmission directions of the optical signals in integrated circuits is a fundamental research. Previous schemes, such as on-chip optical circulators, are mostly realized by Faraday effect which suffers from material incompatibilities between semiconductors and magneto-optical materials. Achieving highly functional circuits in which light circulates in a particular direction with satisfied performances are still difficult in pure silicon photonics platform. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a three-port passive device supporting optical ordered-route transmission based on silicon thermo-optic effect for the first time. By injecting strong power from only one port, the light could transmit through the three ports in a strict order (1→2, 2→3, 3→1) while be blocked in the opposite order (1→3, 3→2, 2→1). The blocking extinction ratios and operation bandwidths have been investigated in this paper. Moreover, with compact size, economic fabrication process and great extensibility, this proposed photonic integrated circuit is competitive to be applied in on-chip all-optical information processing systems, such as path priority selector.
在片上集成具有不同特定功能的光子学电路是人们所期望的，并且在全光通信网络中成为了重要的需求。特别是，在集成电路中控制光信号传输方向的功能是一项基础研究。以前的方案，如片上光环形器，主要是通过法拉第效应实现的，而法拉第效应受到半导体和磁光材料之间的材料不兼容性的限制。在纯硅光子学平台上，实现具有满足性能的高度集成功能的电路仍然具有挑战性。在这里，我们首次提出并实验证明了一种基于硅热光效应的三端口无源器件，该器件支持光有序路由传输。通过仅从一个端口注入强功率，光可以按照严格的顺序（1→2、2→3、3→1）通过三个端口传输，而在相反的顺序（1→3、3→2、2→1）中则被阻挡。本文研究了这种器件的隔离度和工作带宽。此外，由于其具有紧凑的尺寸、经济的制造工艺和良好的可扩展性，这种提出的光子集成电路有望应用于片上全光信息处理系统，如路径优先级选择器。
