photonic crystal

modulator based

silicon photonics

beam splitter

wavelength conversion

quantum cascade

Scientific Reports

High bandwidth, low voltage electro-optic modulators with high optical power handling capability are important for improving the performance of analog optical communications and RF photonic links. Here we designed and fabricated a thin-film lithium niobate (LN) Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) which can handle high optical power of 110 mW, while having 3-dB bandwidth greater than 110 GHz at 1550 nm. The design does not require etching of thin-film LN, and uses hybrid optical modes formed by bonding LN to planarized silicon photonic waveguide circuits. A high optical power handling capability in the MZM was achieved by carefully tapering the underlying Si waveguide to reduce the impact of optically-generated carriers, while retaining a high modulation efficiency. The MZM has a $$V_\pi L$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>V</mml:mi> <mml:mi>π</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mi>L</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> product of 3.1 V.cm and an on-chip optical insertion loss of 1.8 dB.

110 GHz, 110 mW hybrid silicon-lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder modulator