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By

Matan Jackont

(MSc. student under the supervision of Prof. Yossi Rosenwaks)

School of Electrical Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel

Fabrication and Simulation of a Plasma Dispersion Modulator in Polysilicon

Silicon photonics is a fathomable development in the electronics industry. Due to the bottleneck of high data rate transmission, employing optical interconnects, in which information signals are carried by photons instead of electrons, seems only natural. The optical properties of Silicon can be used to create various devices, among which are optical modulators.

Currently, plasma dispersion is the most common method of achieving modulation in Si, in which the refractive index, both the real part, called electrorefraction, and the imaginary part, called electroabsorption, change with the concentration of free carriers in Si.

Converting a change in refractive index into intensity modulation is generally accomplished by one of two options. One common method is to change the relative phase of one arm waveguide compared to the other. This is commonly achieved by a Mach-Zender Interferometer (MZI).

In this work, the design and simulation results of a Polysilicon plasma dispersion waveguide and modulator are presented. Polysilicon large grain fabrication process was defined and electrical simulations were performed to characterize the device. The optical performance of the device was characterized using optical simulation tools, and the conditions for the viability of an MZI-based modulator in Polysilicon were established.

Monday, February 23, 2015, at 10:00

Room 200, Wolfson building