Air-trench splitters for ultra-compact ring resonators in low refractive index contrast waveguides.
We demonstrate air-trench splitters in low index contrast perfluorocyclobutyl (PFCB) waveguides. Splitters are fabricated by etching 800 nm wide high aspect ratio (18:1) trenches. The measured optical loss is 0.4 dB/splitter. The reflection/transmission splitting ratio is 0.859/0.141, which closely matches two-dimensional finite difference time domain (2DFDTD) simulation results. Air-trench splitters and bends are used to demonstrate an ultra-compact ring resonator (RR) with a size reduction of 1,700 compared to a RR based on traditional curved waveguides in the same material system. A comparison between the RR's measured and analytically calculated performance shows close agreement when splitter and bend losses are taken into account.
Rahmanian
Nazli
N
1Nano and Micro Devices Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA.
Kim
Seunghyun
S
Lin
Yongbin
Y
Nordin
Gregory P
GP
D000388:Air; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008904:Miniaturization; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*