Ultra Compact Power Efficient Nanophotonic Waveguide Modulator using Functional Polymer on Silicon Nanopillars

In this program, Omega Optics and the University of Texas, Austin propose to develop an ultra compact active nanophotonic waveguide modulator utilizing functional polymeric materials with low driving voltage through the enhanced optical nonlinear effect provided by slow photon effect. Although polymer photonic active devices have achieved significant progress in modulation speed in the past two decades, the device size and half-wave voltage (V~{&P~}) has insignificant improvements due to the intrinsic constraints of conventional photonics. An ultra compact and power efficient nanophotonic modulator will be demonstrated employing active polymer photonic crystal waveguides on a silicon platform. The proposed structure, which employs EO polymer filled silicon nanopillar arrays, obtains a true in-plane photonic bandgap with slow photon effect while employing the largest EO coefficient ~{&C~}33. This polymer-on-silicon-nanopillar approach achieves a spacious bandgap design area and a high electro-optic interact efficiency. The fabrication process proposed herein resolves the barrier between the device design and the device realization. In the phase I program, we anticipate the modulation length of the polymer photonic crystal modulator to be no more than 200~{&L~}m, and the total device length less than 2mm, with a power efficient operation up to 10GHz. Further improvement in device performance and packaging and system integration using the proposed device will be demonstrated in phase II.