Integrated microcombs bring a parallel and coherent optical frequency comb to compact chip-scale devices. They offer promising prospects for mass-produced comb sources in a compact, power-efficient, and robust manner, benefiting many basic research and practical applications. In the past two decades, they have been utilized in many traditional fields, such as high-capacity parallel communication, optical frequency synthesis, frequency metrology, precision spectroscopy, and emerging fields like distance ranging, optical computing, microwave photonics, and molecule detection. In this review, we briefly introduce microcombs, including their physical model, formation dynamics, generation methods, materials and fabrications, design principles, and advanced applications. We also systematically summarize the field of integrated optical combs and evaluate the remaining challenges and prospects in each aspect.
Microcombs are revolutionizing optoelectronics by providing parallel, mutually coherent wavelength channels for time-frequency metrology and information processing. To implement this essential function in integrated photonic systems, it is desirable to drive microcombs directly with an on-chip laser in a simple and flexible way. However, two major difficulties have prevented this goal: (1) generating mode-locked comb states usually requires a significant amount of pump power and (2) the requirement to align laser and resonator frequency significantly complicates operation and limits the tunability of the comb lines. Here, we address these problems by using microresonators on an AlGaAs on-insulator platform to generate dark-pulse microcombs. This highly nonlinear platform dramatically relaxes fabrication requirements and leads to a record-low pump power of <1 mW for coherent comb generation. Dark-pulse microcombs facilitated by thermally controlled avoided mode crossings are accessed by direct distributed feedback laser pumping. Without any feedback or control circuitries, the comb shows good coherence and stability. With around 150 mW on-chip power, this approach also leads to an unprecedentedly wide tuning range of over one free spectral range (97.5 GHz). Our work provides a route to realize power-efficient, simple, and reconfigurable microcombs that can be seamlessly integrated with a wide range of photonic systems.
Optical gyroscope is an important high-precision inertial measurement instrument, which plays significant role in defense, geological exploration and navigation. For high accuracy optical gyroscope system, a high-performance polarizer is strongly needed to filter only one polarization from Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) source. Here, the plasmon-assisted structure is introduced by setting a thin metal layer above the silicon nitride (Si3N4) waveguide. The copper (Cu) is chosen as the metal layer material as it is compatible with the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication process. The surface plasmons effect can simply be excited by TM polarization due to the electric field of TM polarization perpendicular to the metal layer, so that it can bring extra propagation loss. The TE polarization, on the contrary, fail to excite the surface plasmons effect as the electric field is parallel to the metal layer. To reduce the reflection caused by mode mismatch, the distance between metal layer and waveguide is increased by inserting a SiO2 layer. The chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) process allows precise thickness control of the SiO2 layer. The spiral waveguide structure is utilized to fully suppress TM polarization while the TE polarization can be well confined in broadened Si3N4 core with negligible propagation loss. The numerical results show that the working wavelength range is as large as 60 nm from 820 nm to 880 nm with the polarization extinction ratio > 30 dB and the insert loss < 0.5 dB. As far as we known, this is the first time to achieve ultra-high extinction ratio, ultra-low insertion loss, ultra-low reflection at the same time, and also achieve a working wavelength range larger than 60 nm at the center of 850 nm. Moreover, the proposed structure doesn’t require high alignment accuracy and is compatible with silicon-on-insulator fabrication technology.
We demonstrate a high reliability mobile fronthaul transmission system using a novel Maximal Ratio Combined receiver (MRC-RX) which combines direct and lite-coherent detections. The maximal ratio combined algorithm employed in the MRC-RX takes the advantage of both direct detection and lite-coherent detection, it ensures the best performance in the case of either low or high optical received power. By using MRC-RX, the error vector magnitude (EVM) performance can be reduced to be smaller than 10% in the proof-of-concept experiment.
A silicon-based germanium waveguide photodetector was demonstrated and its reliability related items were investigated. For different reverse biases, the slopes of the dark current increment versus stress time curves were first found to be the same, which made the lifetime extrapolation feasible. The lifetime of the photodetector under different bias was predicted by using a simple extrapolation method. In order to maintain the 10-year lifetime of the photodetector, the bias voltage should be kept lower than −3 V. For the first time, the degradation mechanism under stress biases was analyzed in detail by the reaction-diffusion (RD) model. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical derivation based on RD model.
A 30 Gb/s Ge waveguide photodetector was demonstrated and its reliability under elevated temperatures and high stress
biases were investigated. For different reverse biases, the slopes of the dark current increment versus stress bias time
curves were initiatively found to be the same and made the lifetime extrapolation feasible. The lifetime of the Ge
waveguide photodetector under different stress bias was predicted by using a simple extrapolation method. To maintain
the ten-year lifetime of the Ge waveguide photodetector, the bias voltage should be kept lower than -3V. For the first
time, the degradation mechanism under stress biases was analyzed in detail by the reaction-diffusion model. The
experimental results agree well to the theoretical derivation based on reaction-diffusion model.
A polarization beam splitter (PBS) based on cascaded step-size multimode interference (MMI) coupler is demonstrated on silicon on insulator. The total area of MMI sections is smaller than 7×600 μm 2 . This PBS shows 25-nm bandwidth for transverse-electric polarization and 20-nm bandwidth for transverse-magnetic polarization with an extinction ratio more than 20 dB. The length of this PBS is reduced to about one ninth of that of the conventional design in MMI sections.
Recent progress on Si-based optical components for advanced optical communication systems has been demonstrated. The polarization beam splitter with extinction ratio of more than 20 dB and the optical 90-deg hybrid having phase deviation within ±5-deg were obtained using multimode interference structures. The 12 Gb/s modulators and the 20 GHz photodetectors were measured. Benefiting from the unique properties of silicon modulator, an error-free 80 Km transmission of the signals generated by our silicon carrier-depletion Mach-Zehnder modulator was also demonstrated at 10 Gb/s and the power penalty was as low as 1.15 dB. These results show that silicon photonics has a great potential in advanced optical communication systems.
In this paper, we demonstrated recent progress on Si based optical components for advanced optical communication systems. The polarization beam splitter with extinction ratio of more than 20dB and the optical 90° hybrid having phase deviation within ±5° were obtained using MMI structures. The 12Gb/s modulators and the 20GHz photodetectors were measured. Benefiting from the unique properties of silicon modulator, an error-free 80Km transmission of the signals generated by our silicon carrier-depletion Mach-Zehnder modulator was also demonstrated at 10Gb/s and the power penalty was as low as 1.15dB. These results show that silicon photonics has a great potential in advanced optical communication systems.
We propose a novel optical modulator based on poly-on-silicon slot-loaded waveguide to fit the CMOS process and it
demonstrated a large loss reduction from 54.2dB/cm to 22.9dB/cm numerically compared with strip-loaded waveguide
structure.
A compact 1.6×10μm2 germanium pin waveguide photodetector was demonstrated on a Silicon-on-Insulator substrate. The dark current of the photodetector was measured to be 0.66μA at -1V bias voltage, which is much lower than recently reported. The photodetector exhibited a 3-dB bandwidth of 20GHz at the wavelength of 1.55μm. A clear open eye
diagram at 10Gb/s was also obtained.
Erbium silicates and Yttrium and Ytterbium co-doped Er silicates have been fabricated in sol-gel and sputtering
methods. Two orders of magnitude photoluminescence intensity enhancement was observed by Yttrium and
Ytterbium co-doping Er silicates compared with that of pure Er silicate. Three kinds of waveguide structure, the
strip-loaded, slot and hybrid ErYb/Y silicates waveguides have been obtained, and the optical amplification was
observed in these waveguide structures. 1.53μm electroluminescence in ErYb silicates was also realized using hot
carriers’ impact excitations of Er ions.
The fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) systems are growing fast these days, where two different wavelengths are used for
upstream and downstream traffic, typically 1310nm and 1490nm. The duplexers are the key elements to separate these
wavelengths into different path in central offices (CO) and optical network unit (ONU) in passive optical network (PON).
Multimode interference (MMI) has some benefits to be a duplexer including large fabrication tolerance, low-temperature
dependence, and low-polarization dependence, but its size is too large to integrate in conventional case. Based on the
silicon photonics platform, ultra-short silicon MMI duplexer was demonstrated to separate the 1310nm and 1490nm
lights. By studying the theory of self-image phenomena in MMI, the first order images are adopted in order to keep the
device short. A cascaded MMI structure was investigated to implement the wavelength splitting, where both the light of
1310nm and 1490nm was input from the same port, and the 1490nm light was coupling cross the first MMI and output at
the cross-port in the device while the 1310nm light was coupling through the first and second MMI and output at the
bar-port in the device. The experiment was carried on with the SOI wafer of 340nm top silicon. The cascaded MMI was
investigated to fold the length of the duplexer as short as 117μm with the extinct ratio over 10dB.
Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) generally consist of transparent polymer sheets doped with luminescent species. Incident sunlight is absorbed by the luminescent species and emitted with high quantum efficiency, so that the emitted light is trapped in the sheets and travels to the edges where it can be collected by solar cells. Unlike regular solar spectrum, the emission spectrum of LSCs based on Lumogen Red dye red shifts and concentrates to a small range of wavelengths (600nm to 700nm). Therefore, hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), whose bandgap is around 750nm, can absorb the emission light without many thermalization losses.
Due to the low diffusion lengths in a-Si:H, thin absorbing layer should be applied, causing insufficient light absorbance. In this letter, we propose a structure that coupling nanostructured plasmonic back contact to LSC solar cell. After optimization, numerical results show that the photocurrent intensity increases by a factor of 1.30 compared with LSC solar cells with randomly textured back contacts. In contrast, when illuminated by one Sun, the photocurrent for textured cell compares to that for nanostructured cell.
The remarkable photocurrent enhancement in LSC cells is attributed to two main reasons. First, the wavelengths, where nanostructured cell shows higher absorbance compared with textured one, are identical with the emission peak of LSC. Second, the light interferences constructed in flat cells, which cause the absorbance curve to red shift and match with the emission spectrum, are depressed in textured cell, but are maintained in nanostructured cell. The second reason is described in detail.
An optical 90° hybrids based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) 4×4 MMI couplers have been fabricated in 340nm top
silicon using E-Beam technology. Below 2.2° phase deviation of the hybrids for the across C-band of TE mode have
been simulated, which is well satisfied with the typical systems requirements. The measured optical transmission powers
from port to port show that the devices function well as a 6dB power divider with excess loss around 1dB at wavelength
λ=1550nm for TE mode. The measured transmission spectra of the 4×4 MMI coupler are seriously affected by the FP
resonance noise, which bring in error in phase deviation testing.
A multimode interference (MMI) polarization splitter with easy fabrication process was demonstrated
in Silicon-On-Insulator substrate. The minimum device size, 8 μm×1034 μm was designed by Quasistate
imaging effect theory. Numerical simulations show that this optimized MMI polarization splitter
has a good fabrication tolerance. The tolerance of width and length is ±0.04 μm and ± 10 μm for
transverse electric (TE) mode and ±0.14 μm and ±35 μm for transverse magnetic (TM) mode. The
bandwidths are 20 nm and 80 nm for TE and TM respectively. Experiment results exhibits a -15 dB
polarization extinction ratio bandwidth of 20 nm for the
through-path and much wider for the crosspath.
The extinction ratio and crosstalk achieve (-27.3 dB, -22.6 dB) for TE and (-26.6 dB, -23.9 dB)
for TM.
A novel CMOS-compatible thermal compensator which can compensate most of silicon photonic integrated devices with
the positive thermal-optical effect was demonstrated using a modified asymmetric Mach-Zender-Interferometer.
Furthermore, an athermal waveguide was designed using the demonstrated thermal compensator to compensate the
conventional waveguide with the positive thermal-optical effect. Based on simulations, the temperature dependence of
the athermal compensated waveguide is stable within the temperature range of 25-52 °C and the temperature range can
be largely extended through optimizing the structure of the thermal compensator. In addition, the different length of
conventional waveguide can be compensated by adjusting some parameters.
In recent years, silicon nanophotonic devices have attracted more and more attention due to their compactness, low power consumption, and easy integration with other functions. In addition to the higher index of silicon material providing stronger light confinement, the optical resonance associated with the novel structure design also enhances the performance of nanophotonic devices and offers stronger light-matter interaction. Silicon nanophotonic devices such as polarization beamsplitters, mirrors and reflectors, slow light waveguides, and microring sensors are studied, and all of them demonstrate much better performances due to the incorporated optical resonance enhancement.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.