Ultrafast Hybrid Active Materials and Devices for Compact RF Photonics

In this project, we propose to use the radiation-assisted poling technique to enhance the electro-optic coefficient of a polymer that we will integrate within a silicon nano-slot waveguide. The electro-optic coefficient in the slot is expected to improve to nearly its optimal value that it exhibits in bulk material. To avoid a free carrier transit time limit and reduce the radio-frequency propagation loss, we also propose to use undoped silicon strips to replace the doped silicon strips conventionally used to create a nano-slot waveguide. Applying an appropriate traveling-wave design to the electrodes will produce an ultra-compact, ultra-high speed, high-efficiency optical modulator that can work with a halfwave voltage less than 1V for millimeter-wave applications with up to 100 GHz bandwidth. BENEFIT: This program to develop 100-Gbps electro-optic modulators will benefit ultra-fast applications such as atmospheric sensing, radio astronomy, passive imaging, 77-GHz automotive RADAR, 60-GHz WLAN, test and measurement synthesizers, and wide-band communication systems including 100 Gbps links for next-generation telecommunications. The greatest demand for 100 Gbps modulators will come from the telecommunications industry. Telecommunication systems will jump in data rate from 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps in the near future. Demonstrated 100 Gbps systems have used multiple modulators to carve out a single 100 Gbps signal. The nanoslot modulator would provide these 100 Gbps signals using one modulator. Using only one nanoslot modulator will reduce cost, volume, and power consumption---an ideal combination of improvements for cost-sensitive commercial markets.