Abstract

Silicon nanophotonics has been emerged as a key platform for various optical devices as well as systems. Metal based interconnection technology is facing severe challenges due to bandwidth demand for high performance computing. Silicon photonics based optical interconnects are cost effective as well as higher bandwidth. Light modulation in silicon is achieved by varying the carrier density to change the local index of refraction [1]. We demonstrate photonic crystal based Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) modulator with cascaded p/n junctions which are arranged as shown in Fig. 1(a) and compare with non-photonic crystal based MZI modulator with cascaded p/n junctions as shown in Fig. 1(b). In the photonic crystal based MZI light is strongly confined into waveguide for that lower loss is introduced.

© 2014 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America