A review of lithium niobate modulators for fiber-optic communications systems

Abstract

Abstract-The current status of lithium-niobate external-modulator technology is reviewed with emphasis on design, fabrication, system requirements, performance, and reliability. The technology meets the performance and reliability requirements of current 2.5-, 10-, and 40-Gb/s digital communication systems, as well as CATV analog systems. The current trend in device topology is toward higher data rates and increased levels of integration. In particular, multiple high-speed modulation functions, such as 10-Gb/s return-to-zero pulse generation plus data modulation, have been achieved in a single device.

A strong electro-optically active lead-free ferroelectric integrated on silicon

“…In this context, devices working in the optical domain have emerged as a mature field of research 11 , and building blocks required for a functional photonic network such as detectors 12 or modulators 13 have already been integrated on Si. However, today's silicon photonics technology does not exploit the linear electro-optical (EO) properties available in oxides, which for decades fuelled the progress in telecommunication based on fibre optics to extremely high modulation speeds with well-established devices 14 . In recent work, micro-scale EO devices have been presented 15 .…”

“…However, these approaches are both limited to relatively small EO coefficients (r LNO E30 pm V À 1 (ref. 14), r Si E1.7 pm V À 1 (ref. 18) compared with those of alternative oxides (for example, barium titanate (BTO), r BTO 41,000 pm V À 1 ) (ref.…”

Fabrication of microelectrodes deeply embedded in LiNbO3 using a femtosecond laser

“…Electro-optic components based on LiNbO 3 waveguiding structures have gained significant importance, such as electro-optic switches [1], modulators [2][3][4] and electro-optic tuned quasi-phase-matched (QPM) devices [5,6]. In these components, it is crucial to design and fabricate electrodes, which have been realized commonly by use of lithographic methods.…”

Implementation of 2-bit multiplier based on electro-optic effect in Mach–Zehnder interferometers

“…Due to variation of the refractive index, the phase difference arises, and depending upon the phase, signal shifts from one waveguide to another waveguide. LiNbO 3 based MZI is characterized by the attractive features of compact size, thermal stability (Wooten et al 2000), re-configurability (Jin et al 2014), integration potential (Wooten et al 2000), low latency and low power consumption (Singh et al 2012;Kumar Kumar et al 2015b). Due to which many researchers have shown their keen interest and implemented various combinational and sequential circuits using MZIs (Kumar et al , 2014a(Kumar et al , b, 2015aRaghuwanshi et al 2013Raghuwanshi et al , 2014.…”