High performance electro-optic modulator based on thin-film lithium niobate

Abstract:

Electro-optic (EO) modulator plays a very critical role in the optical communication systems. Here, we report a stimulated thin-film lithium niobate (LN) modulator with a half-wave voltage-length product of 1.8 V.cm, which can successfully achieve modulation and demodulation of a 1 GHz sinusoidal signal with an amplitude of 5 V in experiment. The optical loss caused by metal electrodes is reduced by optimizing the waveguide structure and depositing silica onto the waveguide, and group-velocity matching and characteristic impedance matching are achieved by optimizing the buffer silica layer and the electrode structure for larger bandwidth, which simultaneously improves the modulation efficiency and bandwidth performance. Our work demonstrated here paves a foundation for integrated photonics.