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With the ever-increasing need for higher data rates, datacom and telecom industries are now migrating to silicon photonics to achieve higher data rates with reduced manufacturing costs. However, the optical packaging of integrated photonic devices with multiple I/O ports remains a slow and expensive process. We introduce an optical packaging technique to attach fiber arrays to a photonic chip in a single shot using CO2laser fusion splicing. We show a minimum coupling loss of 1.1 dB, 1.5 dB, and 1.4 dB per-facet for 2, 4, and 8-fiber arrays (respectively) fused to the oxide mode converters using a single shot from the CO2laser.
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Silicon photonic wavelength cross-connect with integrated MEMS switching
We report on monolithically integrated wavelength cross-connects (WXCs) on an enhanced silicon photonic platform with integrated micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) actuators. An 8 × 8 WXC with 8 wavelength channels comprising 16 echelle gratings and 512 silicon photonic MEMS switches is integrated on a 9.7 mm × 6.7 mm silicon chip. The WXC inherits the fundamental advantages of silicon photonic MEMS space switches, including low loss, broad optical bandwidth, large fabrication tolerance, and simple digital control. The WXC exhibits a low crosstalk of −30 dB, a submicrosecond switching time of 0.7 µs, and on-chip optical insertion losses varying from 8.8 dB to 16.4 dB. To our knowledge, it is the largest channel capacity (64 channels = 8 ports × 8 wavelengths) integrated WXC ever reported.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1827633
- PAR ID:
- 10594244
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Institute of Physics
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- APL Photonics
- Volume:
- 4
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 2378-0967
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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