IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO.

3, MARCH 2005

585

Optical Directional Coupler Based on Si-Wire Waveguides

Hirohito Yamada, Member, IEEE, Tao Chu, Member, IEEE, Satomi Ishida, and Yasuhiko Arakawa, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractWe fabricated optical directional couplers with Si-wire waveguides and demonstrated their fundamental characteristics. Their coupling-length was extremely short, several micrometers, because of strong optical coupling between the waveguide cores. Wavelength demultiplexing functions were also demonstrated for devices with a long coupled waveguide. Optical output from a device 800 m long changed reciprocally with 2.5-nm wavelength spacing between the parallel and cross ports. Index TermsDemultiplexing, integrated optics, optical communication equipment, optical directional couplers (DCs), optical planar waveguide couplers, optical waveguide lters, silicon-on-insulator technology, wavelength-division multiplexing.

Fig. 1. Top and cross-sectional views of a Si-wire-waveguide DC.

I. INTRODUCTION

PTICAL directional couplers (DCs) are one of the most fundamental components in optical devices and are used in power combiner/dividers, adddrop multiplexers [1], and switches [2]. Conventional DCs are made of optical bers or semiconductor-based, silica-based, or lithiumniobate-based optical waveguides. They are more than several millimeters long because the coupling lengths of their coupled waveguides range from several hundred micrometers to several millimeters. Furthermore, to transfer optical power to and from two waveguide cores separately, we need S-shaped waveguides several millimeters long for the input and output ports because those waveguides cannot be bent to a radius of less than several millimeters. Silicon-wire waveguides [3], [4] are attractive structures to use for optical interconnections on Si chips. Their bending radius can be less than a few micrometers because the large differand ence between the refractive indexes of the Si core silica cladding strongly connes the optical eld to the waveguide core. Various optical devices with Si-wire waveguides have been demonstrated [3], [5], but to the best of our

knowledge, detailed studies on DCs with Si-wire waveguides have not yet been reported. In this letter, we present optical DCs based on Si-wire waveguides and discuss their characteristics. We also describe their structure, the fabrication process we used, and the calculated and measured results we obtained. II. STRUCTURE AND FABRICATION The DCs were fabricated using a silicon-on-insulator wafer with a 0.3- m-thick single-crystal Si surface layer and a 1- m-thick buried SiO layer on a Si substrate. The surface Si layer was rst patterned by using electronic beam lithography to form the waveguide core pattern of DCs. After this layer was then etched down to the SiO layer with an inductively coupled plasma dry etcher, the pattern that had been formed on the SiO layer was buried under a 1.0- m-thick layer of SiO . Finally, the devices for measurement were cut from the wafer in a sample bar that included many of these devices. Top and cross-sectional views of the coupled waveguide portion of the DC are shown in Fig. 1. The cores of the Si-wire m cross sections that were 0.3 m waveguides had apart. S-shaped waveguides were connected to both the input and output ports of the coupled waveguides in order to separate the light delivered to the two waveguide cores from the light delivered by them. The radius of curvature for the S-shaped waveguide was 10 m, so the overall lengths of the DCs were 40 m more than the length of the coupled portion of the waveguides. We fabricated various types of DC samples with different coupled-waveguide lengths . III. CHARACTERISTICS We rst calculated characteristics of the coupled waveguide by using a three-dimensional nite-difference time-domain method. Fig. 2(a) shows the electric eld proles calculated for coupled waveguides with different waveguide core spacings (0.3 and 0.2 m) when lightwaves with a 1.55- m wavelength were launched from the lower ports of the left-side waveguide cores. The length was 10 m for both waveguides, and the

Manuscript received September 7, 2004; revised October 18, 2004. This study was carried out as part of the Photonic Network Project under contract to the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and the Focused Research and Development Project for the Realization of the Worlds Most Advanced IT Nation, IT Program, MEXT. H. Yamada is with the Fundamental and Environmental Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation, Ibaraki 305-8501, Japan, and also with the Optoelectronic Industry and Technology Development Association (OITDA), Ibaraki 305-8501, Japan (e-mail: h-yamada@az.jp.nec.com). T. Chu is with the Optoelectronic Industry and Technology Development Association (OITDA), Ibaraki 305-8501, Japan (e-mail: tchu@frl.cl.nec.co.jp). S. Ishida and Y. Arakawa are with the Nanoelectronics Collaborative Research Center (NCRC) IIS and RCAST, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan (e-mail: satomi@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp; arakawa@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LPT.2004.840926

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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 3, MARCH 2005

Fig. 3. Measured light output power versus coupled length of Si-wire waveguide. (a) E perpendicular to substrate. (b) E parallel to substrate.

Fig. 2. Calculated characteristics of coupled waveguides based on Si-wire waveguide. (a) Electric eld proles. (b) Optical intensity prole.

cores in both waveguides had m cross sections. The electric eld of the launched lightwave was perpendicular to the substrate. The coupling lengths obtained from the proles were 10.0 m in the waveguide with the 0.3- m core spacing and 4.9 m in the waveguide with the 0.2- m core spacing, indicating that these coupled waveguides have extremely strong optical coupling. Fig. 2(b) shows a plot of optical intensity in the cores of the waveguides with the 0.3- m core spacing. The labels parallel and cross in the gure respectively show the plots of optical intensity in the same and different waveguide cores as the lightwave was launched, and the solid and broken lines respectively show the plots for polarizations of electric eld perpendicular and parallel to the substrate. The coupling length was found to be a little longer when the electric eld is parallel to the substrate. Before measuring the characteristics of DCs, we used a cutback method to evaluate the propagation losses for straight Si-wire waveguides. The optical transmission of the waveguide was measured with tapered optical bers that were coupled to the input and output ports of the waveguides. The propagation loss was almost constant in the measured wavelength range of 15101640 nm, and the estimated propagation and coupling losses with the tapered ber were, respectively, 1.89 dB/mm and 6.1 dB/facet when the polarization of the electric eld was perpendicular to the substrate. The corresponding losses for the other polarization (parallel to the substrate) were a little higher than these values. Light output power from both output ports of the DCs was measured when a 1.55- m wavelength laser beam was directed into one of the input ports, and the output powers measured for DCs with coupled waveguide lengths from 0 to 10 m are plotted in Fig. 3. As the characteristics depended on the polarization, we measured the output powers for both parallel and perpendicular polarizations. The powers from both output ports were complementary, and for both polarizations they changed sinusoidaly according to the coupled waveguide do not correlength. Although the values measured for spond to an actual coupled waveguide length of zero (because the S-shaped waveguides at the entrance sections act as part of the coupled waveguide), the coupling length can be estimated to about 10 m when the polarization of the electric eld

Fig. 4. Wavelength dependence of light output from a 100-m-long DC. (a) Measured transmittance. (b) Calculated output power. (c) Light scattered from the top surface of the device.

was perpendicular to the substrate and to be 11 m when the electric eld was parallel to the substrate. The coupling due to the S-shaped waveguides was estimated by extrapolation to correspond to a coupling length of 2 m. These results were in good agreement with our calculated results. We also fabricated DCs with longer coupled waveguides, and the wavelength dependence of measured transmittance is plotted in Fig. 4(a) for the two output ports (parallel and cross) of a DC with a 100- m-long coupled waveguide. There was strong dependence on wavelength: At 1549 nm, most of the light power was output from the parallel port, and at 1569 nm most of the light power was output from the cross port. The photomicrographs in Fig. 4(c) show light scattered from the top surface of the device observed with an infrared microscope at these wavelengths. The ripples in the plot in Fig. 4(a) might be caused by FabryProt reection because both facets of the DC were uncoated. Although DCs with strong optical coupling generally degrade the extinction ratio, an extinction ratio greater than 20 dB was obtained. The insertion loss around 1550 nm was about 15 dB. We think that most of the loss was coupling loss with the tapered bers (6.1 dB 2 for both facets) and the rest was propagation loss. The wavelength dependence of the calculated light output power [Fig. 4(b)] was similar to that observed in the light output power measured when the core width is 10% smaller than its designed size (0.3 m), which may indicate the accuracy of our fabrication process.

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extremely short coupling lengths, typically about 10 m, which means that they can be used as compact power dividers or combiners for optical communication signals. We also demonstrated wavelength-selective characteristics of light output from long DCs. The optical outputs from the parallel and cross ports of an 800- m-long device changed reciprocally with a 2.5-nm wavelength periodicity, which indicates that this device might be used as a wavelength multiplexerdemultiplexer or interleaver in dense wavelength-division-multiplexing systems. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank M. Tokushima, A. Gomyo, J. Ushida, and M. Shirane for fruitful discussions and K. Nakamura and J. Sone for their support. REFERENCES
[1] N. Ofusa, T. Saito, T. Shimoda, T. Hanada, Y. Urino, and M. Kitamura, An optical add-drop multiplexer with a grating-loaded directional coupler in silica waveguides, IEICE Trans. Commun., vol. E82-B, pp. 12481251, 1999. [2] H. Kogelnik and R. V. Schmidt, Switched directional couplers with alternating  , IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. QE-12, no. 7, pp. 396401, Jul. 1976. [3] B. E. Little, J. S. Foresi, G. Steinmeyer, E. R. Thoen, S. T. Chu, H. A. Haus, E. P. Ippen, L. C. Kimerling, and W. Greene, Ultra-compact Si-SiO microring resonator optical channel dropping lters, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 549551, Apr. 1998. [4] A. Sakai, G. Hara, and T. Baba, Propagation characteristics of ultrahigh- optical waveguide on silicon-on-insulator substrate, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., vol. 40, pp. L383L385, 2001. [5] K. Yamada, T. Shoji, T. Tsuchizawa, T. Watanabe, J. Takahashi, and S. Itabashi, Silicon-wire based ultrasmall lattice lters with wide free spectral ranges, Opt. Lett., vol. 28, pp. 16631664, 2003.

Fig. 5. Wavelength dependence of transmittance for output light from an 800-m-long DC.

Fig. 5 shows a characteristic for a DC with extremely long (800 m) coupled waveguide. In this case, optical output was reciprocally changed with 2.5-nm wavelength spacing between the parallel port and the cross port. Although the measured transmittance showed random changes due to a limitation of measurement system (0.05-nm wavelength steps), an extinction ratio greater than 10 dB was obtained. Even in such a long device, insertion loss was not greater than it was in the devices with the 100- m-long coupled waveguide. This indicates that the excess loss caused by the DC structure is negligible. IV. CONCLUSION We have fabricated optical DCs with Si-wire waveguides and evaluated their fundamental characteristics. We found they had