Design and fabrication of multimode interference coupler with strong confinement structure on silicon-on-insulator

Abstract
A 1×8 multimode interference coupler with a strong confinement structure in the multimode region was proposed and fabricated on silicon-on-insulator material. In the multimode region, the waveguide was etched to the buried silica layer so as to realize the strong confinement and obtain better resolution of the self-imaging effect, while in the input/output ports, the rib waveguides with the large cross-section rib structure were designed to satisfy the single-mode condition, with which the device could be efficiently coupled with single-mode fibers or other waveguide devices. The fabrication process was also specially designed to eliminate the photolithography alignment error. © 2004 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.