Low Power Consumption Hybrid-Integrated Thermo-Optic Switch with Polymer Cladding and Silica Waveguide Core

Abstract

Taking advantage of the large thermo-optical coefficient of polymer materials, a hybrid-integrated thermo-optic switch was designed and simulated. It is also compatible with the existing silica-based planar light-wave circuit (PLC) platform. To further reduce the power consumption, we introduced the air trench structure and optimized the structural parameters of the heating region. This scheme is beneficial to solving the problem of the large driving power of silica-based thermo-optic switches at this stage. Compared with the switching power of all-silica devices, the power consumption can be reduced from 116.11 mW (TE) and 114.86 mW (TM) to 5.49 mW (TE) and 5.96 mW (TM), which is close to the driving power of the reported switches adopting polymer material as the core. For the TE mode, the switch’s rise and fall times were 121 µs and 329 µs. For the TM mode, the switch times were simulated to be 118 µs (rise) and 329 µs (fall). This device can be applied to hybrid integration fields such as array switches and reconfigurable add/drop multiplexing (ROADM) technology.

Polymer and Hybrid Optical Devices Manipulated by the Thermo-Optic Effect

“…Another hybrid integrated structure using an inorganic material as the core layer and a polymer as the cladding was also investigated. In 2022, a thermo-optic switch with silica as the core layer and polymer as the cladding was demonstrated [ 36 ]. A cross-sectional view of the switch is depicted in Figure 2 c. The width of the core in the heating region was reduced so that the optical field is located more on the polymer cladding, enabling more efficient thermal tuning.…”

“…Another hybrid integrated structure using an inorganic material as the core layer and a polymer as the cladding was also investigated. In 2022, a thermo-optic switch with silica as the core layer and polymer as the cladding was demonstrated [36]. A cross-sectional view of the switch is depicted in Figure 2c.…”

Polymer-Embedding Germanium Nanostrip Waveguide of High Polarization Extinction

“…Moreover, the fabrication technology for polymer waveguide devices is relatively simple, and the optical loss can be suppressed at customized wavelength windows. The polymer material exhibits good thermal tunability [21] and has hence led to a series of novel functional devices, including tuneable external-cavity lasers [28], optical phased arrays [29], thermooptic switches [30], and chip-level optical computing devices [31].…”

Low Power Consuming Mode Switch Based on Hybrid-Core Vertical Directional Couplers with Graphene Electrode-Embedded Polymer Waveguides

“…Meanwhile, the on-chip silicon photonic waveguide switch can reduce the switching time to be 5.4 µs; however, the electric power consumption increases in the meantime, which reaches approximately 22.5 mW [ 26 ]. In a recent work, by using a hybrid structure of polymer cladding and silica waveguide core, the power consumption can be reduced to 5.49 mW (TE) and 5.96 mW (TM) [ 27 ]. A dual-mode 2 × 2 thermo-optic switch was demonstrated with the switching power of 9.0 mW based on the structure of a Mach–Zehnder Interferometer formed by polymer waveguides [ 28 ].…”