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Simulation design of thin film lithium niobate electro-optic modulator with bimetallic layer electrodes

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Abstract

Thin-film lithium niobate electro-optical modulator will become the key device in the future optical communication, which has the advantages of high modulation rate, low half-wave voltage, large bandwidth, and easy integration compared with conventional bulk lithium niobate modulator. However, because the electrode gap of the lithium niobate film modulator is very narrow, when the microwave frequency gets higher, it leads to higher microwave loss, and the electro-optical performance of the modulator will be greatly reduced. Here, we propose a thin film lithium niobate electro-optic modulator with a bimetallic layer electrode structure to achieve microwave loss less than 8 dB/cm in the range of 200 GHz, exhibiting a voltage-length product of 1.1 V·cm and a 3 dB electro-optic bandwidth greater than 160 GHz. High-speed data transmission test has been performed, showing good performance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, 350108, China

    Qiulin Wu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100059, China

    Qiulin Wu, Xinkai Feng, Jiaying Chen, Lei Ma, Huaixi Chen & Wanguo Liang

  3. Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China, Fuzhou, 350108, China

    Qiulin Wu, Xinkai Feng, Jiaying Chen, Lei Ma, Huaixi Chen & Wanguo Liang

Authors
  1. Qiulin Wu
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  2. Xinkai Feng
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  3. Jiaying Chen
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  4. Lei Ma
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  5. Huaixi Chen
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  6. Wanguo Liang
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Correspondence to Huaixi Chen or Wanguo Liang.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

This work has been supported by the Self-deployment Project of Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China (No.2021ZZ104), and the Fujian Province STS Project (Nos.2020T3002 and 2022T3012).

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Wu, Q., Feng, X., Chen, J. et al. Simulation design of thin film lithium niobate electro-optic modulator with bimetallic layer electrodes. Optoelectron. Lett. 20, 339–345 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11801-024-3143-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11801-024-3143-0

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