Silicon lateral-apodized add–drop filter for on-chip optical interconnection

A lateral-apodized add–drop filter is demonstrated in a multimode asymmetric waveguide Bragg grating. This design utilizes two individual superposed gratings with the same sidewall corrugation depth. The strong side lobes of the grating filter are efficiently suppressed by mapping the target apodization profile into lateral shifts between the periods of the two gratings. Compared with other apodized technology, this device is easier to be realized. Experimental results show that the side-lobes suppression ratio can reach 18.5 dB, and a bandwidth of 9.5 nm is achieved by a large corrugation width of 150 nm. The insertion loss at the drop port is only 0.8 dB, and the extinction ratio is up to 24 dB at the through port.