Light guiding properties of the photonic waveguides highly depend on the geometrical parameters once the material platform is decided, such as silicon-on-insulator technology. Uniform index profile can be engineered to obtain Bragg gratings operating in the wavelength or sub-wavelength scales. The standard index modulation of waveguides as in the Bragg gratings gives rise to band gap appearance that provides various types of light filtering features. Besides, the light propagation at the band edges can be tailored to manipulate the group velocity of optical signals. However, highly dispersive nature of band gap edges causes serious pulse distortions. Overcoming this problem by means of limited parameter search and trial-and-error method is a highly challenging design problem since it would be very time consuming to find a suitable structure. To obtain different spectral characteristics for the index guided mode traveling in silicon waveguide and alter the mode’s dispersion property, we propose an inverse design approach based on topology optimization. By appropriately defining figure of merits in the spectral domain, complex index modulation of short length multimode waveguide sections provides sharp filtering features that are ripple-free and accompanied with large group index values (>15.0) over a certain bandwidth at telecom wavelengths (1550 nm). The generated CMOS compatible non-intuitive geometries inside the waveguide structures were fabricated with the standard optical lithography steps and they can be applied to different photonic applications such as optical computing, spectroscopy, and sensing.
We demonstrate high-speed data transmission with beam-steering using an as-fabricated silica optical phased array (OPA) chip. In this OPA, a constant optical path difference was built up in arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) delay lines for allocation of sequential phase delay, which enabled the beam-steering following the wavelength variation. Our designed and fabricated 1x101 silica OPA showed a beam steering of 15.4° by wavelength tuning of 30.37 nm. Using the fabricated silica OPA, 25 Gbps data transmission over a free-space range of 5 m distance was experimentally demonstrated employing an appropriate cylindrical lens, dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) tunable transceiver, and fiber collimator as a receiver. The experimental results showed that free-space data transmission through the silica OPA was successfully achieved with error-free performances regardless of the beam-steering angle.
The light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system is an emerging photonic technology in various applications such as autonomous vehicles, drones, robots, and high-precision 3D imaging. Since conventional LiDAR has employed mechanical beam-steering, the scanning speed is restricted and more power consumption is required. On the other hand, Silicon optical phased array (Si OPA) is a promising solution that can replace the mechanical scanning LiDAR due to the advantages of electrical scanning, small footprint, and low operating power. In this study, we demonstrated a 10 m distance measurement with Si OPA using the time-of-flight (ToF) method. We developed an optical pulse generator for high distance accuracy measurement utilizing an electrical pulse generator, radio frequency amplifier, diplexer, and distributed feedback laser diode to generate an optical output pulse with a 300 ps pulse width. The Si OPA was fabricated using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible processes with an 8-inch silicon-on-insulator wafer. Considering Si chip loss and beam-forming efficiency, the erbium-doped fiber amplifier was used at the front end of the input of Si OPA. An avalanche photodiode that has high speed and sensitivity was utilized as a receiver and the converted optical pulse was observed by a real-time oscilloscope. Using this ToF distance measurement platform, we achieved a 10 m distance measurement with a ranging error of 1.2 cm using Si OPA. Si OPA-based distance measurement platform will allow the realization of 3-dimensional image sensing and further improvement will enable high-accuracy long-distance measurement.
We designed and fabricated a novel MMI-based 1x4 power splitter with parabolic input and output ports by using particle swarm optimization. We achieved low insertion loss (<0.587 dB) and low imbalance (<0.369 dB) in the band of 1477 ~ 1646 nm with a compact size on the silicon-on-insulator platform. In the specific band of 1499 ~ 1626 nm, the insertion loss is less than only 0.488 dB. Additionally, we designed the 2:1:1:2 power splitter which has low insertion loss (<0.585 dB) and low targeted ratio error (<0.364 dB) in the wide band of 1457 ~ 1640 nm. The footprint is only 12.28 x 5 𝜇m2 and the fabrication limitations were also considered in both cases.
In recent years, there has been tremendous development in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) because of the growing demand for computational power and the slowing down of transistor shrinkage. PICs are seen as a promising technology for developing next-generation technologies including the Internet of Things, on-chip data routers, and optical quantum computers due to their compatibility with the long-established complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor fabrication technology and making use of common materials such as silicon and silicon dioxide. As the size of the PICs is shrinking and considering different aspects such as modal size mismatch, fabrication/packaging cost, it has become increasingly difficult to couple light efficiently in-plane or out-of-plane among different photonic elements such as waveguides and fibers. In this study, we propose a two-layer grating coupler using a horizontally placed angle-polished single-mode optical fiber. We used the finite-difference time-domain method and optimization tools including the inverse design technique to investigate the design parameters for performance enhancement of light coupling in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) integrated circuits. We achieved a coupling efficiency of -1.54 dB (70.15%) for fiber-to-SOI chip coupling and a coupling efficiency of -0.97 dB (80%) for chip-to-fiber coupling over a wide bandwidth.
We experimentally demonstrate the free-carrier absorption (FCA)-assisted photodetection using a waveguide-integrated bolometer on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform at the near-infrared range (1520-1620 nm). A heavily-doped silicon (n + Si) plays a role as an efficient light absorption medium, which exploits the mechanism of FCA in Si. For the thermal-to-electrical conversion, a bolometric material of TiOx/Ti/TiOx tri-layer film is integrated onto the n + Si. It offers a sensitivity of -26.75 %/mW with a highly flat spectral response. In addition, a clear on/off bolometric response with the 1 kHz-modulated optical signal was obtained with the rise and fall times of 24.2 μs and 29.2 μs, respectively, which is enough for diverse sensing applications.
We proposed a compact and longitudinally zig-zag shaped 1x4 power splitter using particle swarm optimization algorithm integrated with the finite-difference time-domain method. Different particle sizes in the algorithm are tested and splitter structures with high uniformity (less than 0.04 dB) and small insertion loss (less than 0.40 dB) are achieved over a wide bandwidth. Our designs show the best performance with low insertion loss and high uniformity comparing to the existing ones, while it can be fabricated with industry-standard lithography due to its unit cell length of 100 nm or more.
Silicon photonics has become the key enabling technology in many sensor applications including light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems because of its high integration, chip-scale footprint and CMOS-compatible process. Thanks to these advantages, optical phased array (OPA) based on silicon photonics has emerged as a solid-state LiDAR solution to replace mechanical LiDAR counterpart. In such a system, optical loss from each component of the OPA devices should be minimized, while the radiation efficiency from the radiators of the OPA devices should be maximized for extending the power budget of the LiDAR system. These components can improve their performances through the recently emerged inverse design method. In this study, we designed a novel grating structure which is one of the components of OPA and allows wide-band and high coupling efficiency of light using inverse design approach with the particle-swarm-optimization method. Considering Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) platform with 220 nm thickness, the configuration of the grating structure is determined by the finite number of particles so that the height and width of the corrugations are optimized based on the objective of boosting the out-of-plane radiated power amount. Highly efficient and vertical emission was obtained using finite-difference-time-domain calculation in telecommunication window centered at around 1550 nm. Including additional constraints in the inverse design will allow the realization of multitude spatial field profiles of the radiated light that may have an important contribution for OPA, sensing, imaging, lasers and optical interconnection.
We present inter-chip optical link based on direct optical wire (DOW) bonding technology fabricated by meniscus-guided polymerization in open-air. The arch shape DOW structure is formed in a single procedure for directly linking silicon photonic chips, where grating couplers are integrated to out-couple guided optical modes. Although a typical grating coupler is employed, the inter-chip DOW link supports a low insertion loss of 6 dB in total with a wavelength-insensitive operation in the measured wavelength range of 1520 nm to 1590 nm. The half-arch shape DOW for linking chip-to-fiber is also shown to verify the feasibility of hybrid integration with edge coupling devices. DOW bonding technology can provide a convenient route to enable direct optical link capable of agile and high-throughput manufacturing for inter-chip optical interconnection.
We demonstrate two-dimensional (2-D) beam-steering using only wavelength control from one-dimensional siliconbased OPA, where path differences are sequentially formed in each channel. With 79.6-μm path difference in phasefeeding lines and a 2-μm pitch in grating radiators, we achieved a continuous transversal steering about 46° and a longitudinal steering near 13° with a wavelength tuning of 90 nm. The single-beam with divergence angle of 4° was formed by phase initialization using electro-optic optic p-i-n phase shifters before beam-steering.
We present an 1x16 silicon optical phased array (OPA) based on an electro-optic phase shifter that enables low power consumption and high speed operation. The phase shifter operates by carrier injection based on the p-i-n structure and is designed to optimize the width between doped regions to 2.5 μm. Phase tuning efficiency of 1.7 mW/π and operating speed of 20 MHz were measured from fabricated devices. The difference between the measured values and the values calculated in the simulation was analyzed through additional simulations to indicate that the error occurred in the actual fabrication. In addition, transversal beam steering was achieved in the range of 45° and the average power of 39.6 mW was consumed for phase tuning for each radiation beam.
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