Bandwidth Optimization for Mach–Zehnder Polymer/Sol–Gel Modulators

Coplanar Electrode Polymer Modulators Incorporating Fluorinated Polyimide Backbone Electro-Optic Polymer

“…Electro-optic (EO) polymer modulators have an original advantage of small velocity mismatch between radio-frequency (RF) and optical signals, and by employing a traveling-wave modulation electrode, an optical modulator operable above 100 Gbps was demonstrated [1][2][3]. Although research on EO polymers has been conducted for decades, to prove the technology to be useful for practical application, there are issues to be addressed, such as photo-oxidation, bias drift, large insertion loss, and poor thermal stability [4][5][6].…”

Photonic integration based on a ferroelectric thin-film platform

“…Recently, EO polymers have attracted attention because of their large EO coefficient and ultrafast response to an applied electric field 5,6 . Modulation bandwidth of EO-polymer modulators is more than 100 GHz at low driving voltage, resulting in merits such as eliminating the need for a high-power electrical RF amplifier 7 . Although EO-polymer modulators achieve excellent performance, optical loss of their polymer waveguides is not low enough to allow them to be integrated with other components.…”

Electro-Optic Antenna Elements for Passive Phased Array Radar

“…Bowtie [15] and tapered dipole [20] antennas from the existing literature with bandwidths including the X-band have active lengths for a single antenna element of approximately 1.2 mm. For a rectangular patch antenna inside the X-band with a resonant frequency of 10 GHz and dielectric constants ranging from 2.25-28, a range which includes the dielectric constants of common EO materials [27], the active length could range from 2.8-10 mm, several times that of the bowtie or tapered dipole active lengths. The smaller dielectric constants lead to longer active lengths and are typically found with EO polymer materials while EO crystals have much higher dielectric constants [27].…”

“…LiNbO3 has a relatively large dispersion of 3.1 for z-cut crystals, which causes a velocity mismatch between the RF and optical waves, decreasing the EO phase shift as frequency increases and ultimately limiting the operational bandwidth for LiNbO3 devices to 40 GHz [32][33][34]. Alternatively, the dispersion between RF and optical frequencies for EO polymers is on the order of 100 times smaller, pushing the maximum bandwidth for polymer-based devices above 100 GHz [27,36]. For SEO100C specifically, the dispersion between RF and optical frequencies is less than 0.1 [27].…”

“…Alternatively, the dispersion between RF and optical frequencies for EO polymers is on the order of 100 times smaller, pushing the maximum bandwidth for polymer-based devices above 100 GHz [27,36]. For SEO100C specifically, the dispersion between RF and optical frequencies is less than 0.1 [27]. LiNbO3 is difficult to integrate with silicon because it is fragile and its lattice spacing does not match that of silicon [34].…”