A BaTiO3-Based Electro-Optic Pockels Modulator Monolithically Integrated on an Advanced Silicon Photonics Platform

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the monolithic integration of BaTiO3-based electro-optic modulators into silicon photonics platforms, achieving high-speed operation, improved efficiency, and low power consumption, advancing scalable photonic device fabrication.

Contribution

It introduces a fully PIC-compatible, scalable method for integrating BaTiO3 electro-optic modulators monolithically on silicon photonics platforms using wafer bonding.

Findings

Achieved high-speed modulation at 25 Gbps.

Demonstrated low static power tuning (100 nW).

Outperformed conventional silicon photonic modulators in efficiency and losses.

Abstract

To develop a new generation of high-speed photonic modulators on silicon-technology-based photonics, new materials with large Pockels coefficients have been transferred to silicon substrates. Previous approaches focus on realizing stand-alone devices on dedicated silicon substrates, incompatible with the fabrication process in silicon foundries. In this work, we demonstrate monolithic integration of electro-optic modulators based on the Pockels effect in barium titanate (BTO) thin films into the back-end-of-line of a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) platform. Molecular wafer bonding allows fully PIC-compatible integration of BTO-based devices and is, as shown, scalable to 200 mm wafers. The PIC-integrated BTO Mach-Zehnder modulators outperform conventional Si photonic modulators in modulation efficiency, losses, and static tuning power. The devices show excellent V{\pi}L (0.2 Vcm) and V{\pi}L{\alpha} (1.3 VdB), work at high speed (25 Gbps), and can be tuned at low static power consumption (100 nW). Our concept demonstrates the possibility of monolithic integration of Pockels-based electro-optic modulators in advanced silicon photonic platforms. {\c} 2019 Optical Society of America. Users may use, reuse, and build upon the article, or use the article for text or data mining, so long as such uses are for non-commercial purposes and appropriate attribution is maintained. All other rights are reserved. https://www.osapublishing.org/jlt/abstract.cfm?URI=jlt-37-5-1456 Publication date: March 1, 2019 This work was supported in part by the European Union (EU) under Horizon 2020 grant agreements no. H2020-ICT-2015-25-688579 (PHRESCO) and H2020-ICT-2017-1-780997 (plaCMOS).