Multi-mode interference (MMI) waveguide has been widely researched and developed to realize optical power coupler. MMI coupler exhibits superior performance of the “Equal intensity coupling” characteristics, however, it has a problem that excess loss occurs if the phase matching condition is not satisfied at all of the input-ports. The phase condition depends on the number of input-ports, and relatively complicated phase-control is required, thus, it is desired to realize an optical power coupler without complicated phase adjustment. In order to avoid the phase-control difficulty, nano-pixel power coupler is investigated in this paper. Nano-pixel based coupler has a merit of ultra-compact dimension which is close to the wavelength order, therefore, it is expected that less excess-loss even under simple “equal” phase conditions. The structure was examined using FDTD and the simulated results show equal input (intensity and phase) coupling capabilities with a low excess loss of 0.11 dB.
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