Ultra-compact low loss polarization insensitive silicon waveguide splitter.
We observe that the cascaded typical Y junctions will introduce unwanted periodic fringes over the spectrum in practical systems when they link with multimode waveguides. To solve the problem, we design and experimentally demonstrate a wavelength insensitive multimode interferometer (MMI) based 3-dB splitter which has all the merits of Y-splitters such as polarization insensitivity and ultra-compactness. The splitter has a footprint of 1.5 × 1.8 µm(2), nearly one order smaller than the previously reported MMI splitters. The measured excess losses for TE and TM modes at telecom wavelength are as low as -0.11 dB and -0.18 dB respectively.
1OPTIMUS, School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore639798, Singapore.
Zhe
Z
Xiao
Xianshu
X
Luo
Peng Huei
PH
Lim
Patinharekandy
P
Prabhathan
Samson T H
ST
Silalahi
Tsung-Yang
TY
Liow
Jing
J
Zhang
Feng
F
Luan
D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007368:Interferometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008904:Miniaturization; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012825:Silicon / Q000737:chemistry*; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*
D012825:Silicon