Performance influence of carrier absorption to the Mach-Zehnder-interference based silicon optical switches
- 13 April 2009
- journal article
- Published by Optica Publishing Group in Optics Express
- Vol. 17 (9) , 7043-7051
- https://doi.org/10.1364/oe.17.007043
Abstract
The free carrier absorption effect in silicon modulation is a detrimental behavior that can influence the crosstalk of interference-based optical switches. Based on the experimental analysis of a 2×2 p-i-n silicon switch, we give a conservative estimate of the crosstalk ability of Mach-Zehnder optical switches. Experimental result shows that, while using a 1475μm-long phase shifter, the loss penalty almost reaches 1.45dB/π, which deteriorates the most ideal crosstalk to just 30dB. The possible solutions to overcome this limitation are also discussed at the cost of the other device performance.Keywords
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