Abstract
Electro-optic (EO) modulator plays a very critical role in the optical communication systems. Here, we report a stimulated thin-film lithium niobate (LN) modulator with a half-wave voltage-length product of 1.8 V·cm, which can successfully achieve modulation and demodulation of a 1 GHz sinusoidal signal with an amplitude of 5 V in experiment. The optical loss caused by metal electrodes is reduced by optimizing the waveguide structure and depositing silica onto the waveguide, and group-velocity matching and characteristic impedance matching are achieved by optimizing the buffer silica layer and the electrode structure for larger bandwidth, which simultaneously improves the modulation efficiency and bandwidth performance. Our work demonstrated here paves a foundation for integrated photonics.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
WANG C, ZHANG M, CHEN X, et al. Integrated lithium niobate electro-optic modulators operating at CMOS-compatible voltages[J]. Nature, 2018, 562(7725): 101–104.
WANG C, ZHANG M, STREN B, et al. Nanophotonic lithium niobate electro-optic modulators[J]. Optics express, 2018, 26(2): 1547–1555.
XU M, HE M, ZHU Y, et al. Integrated thin film lithium niobate Fabry-Perot modulator[Invited][J]. Chinese optics letters, 2021, 19(6): 060003.
HE M, XU M, REN Y, et al. High-performance hybrid silicon and lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder modulators for 100 Gbits−1 and beyond[J]. Nature photonics, 2019, 13(5): 359–364.
DESIATOV B, SHAMS-ANSARI A, ZHANG M, et al. Ultra-low-loss integrated visible photonics using thin-film lithium niobate[J]. Optica, 2019, 6(3): 380–384.
KHAREL P, REIMER C, LUKE K, et al. Breaking voltage-bandwidth limits in integrated lithium niobate modulators using micro-structured electrodes[J]. Optica, 2021, 8(3): 357–363.
XU H, LI X, XIAO X, et al. High-speed silicon modulator with band equalization[J]. Optics letters, 2014, 39(16): 4839–4842.
CHMIELAK B, WALDOW M, MATHEISEN C, et al. Pockels effect based fully integrated, strained silicon electro-optic modulator[J]. Optics express, 2011, 19(18): 17212–17219.
BHASKER P, NORMAN J, BOWERS J, et al. Intensity and phase modulators at 1.55 µm in GaAs/AlGaAs layers directly grown on silicon[J]. Journal of lightwave technology, 2018, 36(158): 4205–4210.
WANG S, WANG L, ZHAO L, et al. Compact In-GaAsP/InP asymmetric Mach-Zehnder coupled square ring modulator[J]. IEEE photonics technology letters, 2017, 29(16): 1312–1315.
MIURA H, QIU F, SPRING A M, et al. High thermal stability 40 GHz electro-optic polymer modulators[J]. Optics express, 2017, 25(23): 28643–28649.
QIU F, HAN Y. Electro-optic polymer ring resonator modulators[Invited][J]. Chinese optics letters, 2021, 19(4): 041301.
QIAN G, NIU B, ZHAO W, et al. CL-TWE Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator based on InP-MQW optical waveguides[J]. Chinese optics letters, 2019, 17(6): 061301.
OGISO Y, OZAKI J, UEDA Y, et al. Over 67 GHz bandwidth and 1.5 V Vπ InP-based optical IQ modulator with n-i-p-n heterostructure[J]. Journal of lightwave technology, 2017, 35(8): 1450–1455.
LIU M, YIN X, ULIN-AVILA E, et al. A graphene-based broadband optical modulator[J]. Nature, 2011, 474(7349): 64–67.
PHARE C T, LEE Y D, CARDENAS J, et al. Graphene electro-optic modulator with 30 GHz bandwidth[J]. Nature photonics, 2015, 9(8): 511–514.
LIANG Z X, XU C P, ZHU A J, et al. Hybrid photonic-plasmonic electro-optic modulator for optical ring network-on-chip[J]. Optik, 2020, 210: 164503.
TIBALDI A, GHOMASHI M, BERTAZZI F, et al. Plasmonic-organic hybrid electro/optic Mach-Zehnder modulators: from waveguide to multiphysics modal-FDTD modeling[J]. Optics express, 2020, 28(20): 29253–29271.
QI Y, LI Y. Integrated lithium niobate photonics[J]. Nanophotonics, 2020, 9(6): 1287–1320.
THIELE F, BRUCH F V, QUIRING V, et al. Cryogenic electro-optic polarisation conversion in titanium in-diffused lithium niobate waveguides[J]. Optics express, 2020, 28(20): 28961–28968.
PALIWAL A, SHARMA A, GUO R, et al. Electro-optic (EO) effect in proton-exchanged lithium niobate: towards EO modulator[J]. Applied physics B, 2019, 125(7): 115.
ZHU D, SHAO L, YU M, et al. Integrated photonics on thin-film lithium niobate[J]. Advanced optics photonics, 2021, 13(2): 242–352.
REN T, ZHANG M, WANG C, et al. An integrated low-voltage broadband lithium niobate phase modulator[J]. IEEE photonics technology letters, 2019, 31(11): 889–892.
BAHADORI M, GODDARD L L, GONG S. Fundamental electro-optic limitations of thin-film lithium niobate microring modulators[J]. Optics express, 2020, 28(9): 13731–13749.
HONARDOOST A, JUNEGHANI F A, SAFIAN R, et al. Towards subterahertz bandwidth ultracompact lithium niobate electrooptic modulators[J]. Optics express, 2019, 27(5): 6495–6501.
LIU N, ZHANG J, ZHU Z, et al. Efficient coupling between an integrated photonic waveguide and an optical fiber[J]. Optics express, 2021, 29(17): 27396–27403.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work has been supported by the Science and Technology Planning Project of Hunan Province (Nos.2018JJ1033 and 2017RS3039).
Statements and Declarations
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest related to this article.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, L., Liu, N., Zhang, J. et al. High performance electro-optic modulator based on thin-film lithium niobate. Optoelectron. Lett. 18, 583–587 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11801-022-2049-y
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11801-022-2049-y