Small MMI with simplified coherent coupling branches used to develop a lower footprint power splitter on SOI platform

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel, compact SOI-based 1x2 and 1xN power splitter using simplified coherent coupling and a small MMI, achieving performance comparable to standard MMIs with potential for enhanced integrated photonic devices.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new splitter architecture combining simplified coherent coupling with a small MMI, enabling highly compact and scalable power splitters on SOI with similar performance to standard MMIs.

Findings

Achieved similar splitting performance to standard MMI devices.

Demonstrated spectral flatness in the new splitter design.

Fabricated and tested 1x2 and 1x4 splitter versions.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new approach to fabricate under the Silicon on Insulator (SOI) platform a 1x2 power splitter and scale it to 1xN system device from the proposed model. The current strategy of design is based on the well-known simplified coherent coupling (SCC) which allows the construction of very sharp bends. To split the incoming light, we add at the entrance of the splitter a small Multi Mode Interferometer (MMI). The sensibility of the design parameters is analyzed and discussed in the paper. In addition, we fabricated and evaluated the new splitter architecture on 1x2 and 1x4 versions and then compared our devices with those splitters based on standard multimode interferometer (MMI) also performed in the same SOI photonic chip. The new splitter scheme shows a similar performance to standard MMI, however, a slight spectral flat response was observed in new devices. By the novel approach, highly compact devices can be designed so this strategy can also open new avenues to improve and enhance the performance of integrated devices developed under the SOI scheme.