TY - JOUR
T1 - Width dependence of inherent TM-mode lateral leakage loss in silicon-on-insulator ridge waveguides
AU - Webster, M. A.
AU - Pafchek, R. M.
AU - Mitchell, A.
AU - Koch, T. L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received Nov. 27, 2006. This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant ECS-0335067, by Pennsylvania BFTDA Grant ME#21-116-0014, by the Army Research Laboratory Cooperative Agreement W911NF-04-2-0015, and by the Bandwidth Foundry Pty Ltd., Australia. M. A. Webster, R. M. Pafchek, and T. L. Koch are with the Center for Optical Technologies, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). A. Mitchell is with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2007.891979 Fig. 1. Slab mode indexes used in effective index calculations. The modal indexes for the guided TE-like and TM-like modes, respectively, lie intermediate between their slab values for slab thicknesses t and t . We use index values of n = 3:475 and n = 1:444 at 1.55-m wavelength.
PY - 2007/3/15
Y1 - 2007/3/15
N2 - We report the first experimental observation in the optical domain of a dramatic width-dependent lateral leakage loss behavior for the TM-like mode of tight vertical confinement ridge waveguides formed in silicon-on-insulator. The lateral leakage loss displays a series of sharp cyclic minima at precise waveguide widths, and appears to be inherent to waveguide geometries of central importance to a wide variety of active devices in silicon photonics requiring lateral electrical access. This behavior is not predicted by the often-used effective-index-based methods, but is understood phenomenologically and also compared to prior numerical analysis and predictions of leaky mode behavior. It is shown that TM-like mode operation, critical to the operation of some active component designs, will require precision control of waveguide dimensions to achieve high performance.
AB - We report the first experimental observation in the optical domain of a dramatic width-dependent lateral leakage loss behavior for the TM-like mode of tight vertical confinement ridge waveguides formed in silicon-on-insulator. The lateral leakage loss displays a series of sharp cyclic minima at precise waveguide widths, and appears to be inherent to waveguide geometries of central importance to a wide variety of active devices in silicon photonics requiring lateral electrical access. This behavior is not predicted by the often-used effective-index-based methods, but is understood phenomenologically and also compared to prior numerical analysis and predictions of leaky mode behavior. It is shown that TM-like mode operation, critical to the operation of some active component designs, will require precision control of waveguide dimensions to achieve high performance.
KW - Leaky waves
KW - Optical losses
KW - Optical waveguides
KW - Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology
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U2 - 10.1109/LPT.2007.891979
DO - 10.1109/LPT.2007.891979
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:38049137553
SN - 1041-1135
VL - 19
SP - 429
EP - 431
JO - IEEE Photonics Technology Letters
JF - IEEE Photonics Technology Letters
IS - 6
ER -