Loop-Terminated Mach-Zehnder Interferometer Silicon-Organic Hybrid Modulator

In this work we present a silicon-organic hybrid loop-terminated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (LT-MZI) modulator utilizing slot waveguides in a push-pull configuration. The slots are filled with electro-optic polymer (EOP) that exhibits Pockel’s effect. This design allow for compact modulator with low energy consumption and high operating speed. The modulator is based on the widespread silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. Our modulator can reach up to 100 GHz frequency with femtojoule energy consumption. Finite difference time domain (FDTD) solver shows that our modulator can reach extinction ratio (ER) as high as 40 dB at 1.55 µm wavelength with only 1.15 dB insertion loss (IL).