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.
1Nano and Micro Devices Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA.
Nazli
N
Rahmanian
Seunghyun
S
Kim
Yongbin
Y
Lin
Gregory P
GP
Nordin
D000388:Air; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008904:Miniaturization; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*