High-performance thin-film electro-optical modulator based on heterogeneous silicon and lithium niobate platform (Invited)

Silicon photonic integration platform has attracted extensive attention in the field of optical communication due to its high integration and CMOS process compatibility. As one of the most important devices in optical communication system, electro-optic modulator plays a key role in loading electrical signals onto optical signals. To break the performance limitation of silicon-based modulator, the large-area bonding technology of silicon and lithium niobate and the low loss waveguide etching technology of lithium niobate can be used to achieve high-performance thin film electro-optic modulator based on heterogeneous silicon and lithium niobate platform. At present, this kind of modulator with the best performance exhibits a half-wave voltage of 3 V, a 3 dB electro-optical bandwidth of more than 70 GHz, an insertion loss of less than 1.8 dB, and an extinction ratio of more than 40 dB. In this paper, the research status of integrated modulator based on silicon and lithium niobate heterogeneous platform was compared and the structure design and fabrication process of the heterogeneous integrated thin-film modulator were introduced respectively. Copyright ©2021 Infrared and Laser Engineering. All rights reserved.