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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Optimization of a silicon-on-sapphire waveguide device for optical bistable operation

Hervé Sauer, Nicole A. Paraire, A. Köster, S. Laval

Published Feb 1, 1988• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A silicon-on-sapphire waveguide is studied theoretically and experimentally in a pulsed regime to obtain bistable operation. Very fast switchings can be observed and are explained as a result of the competition between electronic and thermal nonlinear effects. Pseudobistable operation is demonstrated when the electronic effects are favored, owing to an increase in the silicon photogenerated electron–hole pair lifetime or to a reduction in the incident pulse duration. Other factors such as the grating-coupler efficiency and the sample thermalization can, likewise, improve the device operation.

DOI
10.1364/josab.5.000443

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A silicon-on-sapphire waveguide is studied theoretically and experimentally in a pulsed regime to obtain bistable operation. Very fast switchings can be observed and are explained as a result of the competition between electronic and thermal nonlinear effects. Pseudobistable operation is demonstrated when the electronic effects are favored, owing to an increase in the silicon photogenerated electron–hole pair lifetime or to a reduction in the incident pulse duration. Other factors such as the grating-coupler efficiency and the sample thermalization can, likewise, improve the device operation.
The device uses a cristalline silicon film, grown an a sapphire substrate, as nonlinear material. The film is considered as an optical waveguide, in which the excitation light is coupled by a diffraction grating etched on the silicon surface. The grating is covered with a silver layer to get better field enhancement in the waveguide. Light is then incident through the sapphire substrate. For an incidence angle slightly different from the resonance value, the guided mode is weakly excited at low incident power. As power increases, refractive index variations yield better excitation of the mode and bistable operation is predicted.
Nonlinear semiconductor waveguides are investigated with respect to their use for optical bistability and temporal optical switching with results given for silicon-on-sapphire devices. The performance of the waveguides is assessed with comparisons to nonlinear Fabry-Perot cavities, and the conditions for optical bistability are theoretically shown to be possible by combining a waveguide and a diffraction-grating coupler. Structures experimentally investigated include semiconductor layers epitaxially grown on substrates having low refractive indices. Optical switching is reported on reflected or transmitted beams and on the guided-wave intensity by means of excitation pulses in the nanosecond or picosecond range. The data confirm the usefulness of nonlinear waveguides as alternative devices for temporal optical switching and logic-gate development in part due to their good switching times.
We present a theoretical model that describes accurately the nonlinear phenomenon of optical bistability in silicon-waveguide resonators but remains amenable to analytical results. Using this model, we derive a transcendental equation governing the intensity of a continuous wave transmitted through a Fabry-Perot resonator formed using a silicon-on-insulator waveguide. This equation reveals a dual role of free carriers in the formation of optical bistability in silicon. First, it shows that free-carrier absorption results in a saturation of the transmitted intensity. Second, the free-carrier dispersion and the thermo-optic effect may introduce phase shifts far exceeding those resulting from the Kerr effect alone, thus enabling one to achieve optical bistability in ultrashort resonators that are only a few micrometers long. Bistability can occur even when waveguide facets are not coated because natural reflectivity of the silicon- r interface can provide sufficient feedback. We find that it is possible to control the input-output characteristics of silicon-based resonators by changing the free-carrier lifetime using a reverse-biased p-n junction. We show theoretically that such a technique is suitable for realization of electronically assisted optical switching at a fixed input power and it may lead to silicon-based, nanometer-size, optical memories.
The switching dynamics of thermally induced optical bistability in ZnSe nonlinear interference filters is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The device, maintained on its low transmission level by a cw argon laser beam, is switched on its high transmission level by an external light pulse. Either a very fast switching or an important slowing down are obtained when the holding cw intensity or the switching pulse energy are well chosen. This variation of the switching times is analyzed theoretically and observed experimentally.
Optical bistability can be used to explore key components of all-optical information processing systems, such as optical switches and optical random memories.The hybrid integration of emerged two-dimensional layered PtSe 2 with waveguides is promising for the applications.We demonstrated the optical bistability in the PtSe 2 -on-silicon nitride microring resonator induced by a thermo-optic effect.The fabricated device has a resonance-increasing rate of 6.8 pm/mW with increasing optical power.We also established a theoretical model to explain the observation and analyze the device's performance.The study is expected to provide a new scheme for realizing all-optical logic devices in next-generation information processing systems.
We demonstrate optical bistability in a Silicon-On-Insulator two-bus ring resonator with input powers as low as 0.3mW. We evaluate the importance of the different nonlinear contributions and derive time constants for carrier and thermal relaxation effects. In some cases, we also observe pulsation due to interaction between the dominant nonlinear effects. Such a behaviour may be problematic for possible memory and switching operations. Alternatively, it could be used for (tunable) pulse generation.