Research Article Vol. 34, No.

1 / January 2017 / Journal of the Optical Society of America B 183

Numerical modeling of ultracompact folded

photonic crystal waveguide MachZehnder
interferometer thermo-optic switch
D. C. TEE,1,* N. TAMCHEK,2 C. H. RAYMOND OOI,3 AND F. R. MAHAMD ADIKAN4
1
Photonics Lab, Telekom Malaysia Research & Development Sdn Bhd, TM Innovation Centre, 63000 Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia
2
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Malaysia
3
Department of Physics, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
4
Integrated Lightwave Research Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya,
50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*Corresponding author: tdchai@tmrnd.com.my

Received 26 September 2016; revised 29 November 2016; accepted 30 November 2016; posted 1 December 2016 (Doc. ID 277585);
published 20 December 2016

We numerically studied an ultracompact folded-path photonic crystal waveguide MachZehnder interferometer

(MZI) thermo-optic switch based on a small-bend radius double 180 waveguide bend MZI arm. The design can
at least double the active waveguide length and sensitivity while maintaining a small heater size compared to the
conventional MZI design. From 3D finite difference time domain simulation, a refractive index increase of 0.019
in the 25 m long heated arm that is induced by a temperature difference of 102 K produces a phase shift in the
output of the MZI. 2016 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (230.5298) Photonic crystals; (130.5296) Photonic crystal waveguides; (250.5300) Photonic integrated circuits;
(230.0230) Optical devices; (130.4815) Optical switching devices.

https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.34.000183

1. INTRODUCTION switching power of submilliwatts [4]. In addition, the large

Advances in optical switching technologies for applications
such as optical cross connect and optical add-drop multiplexing
are important for a high-performance optical network in the
future. In these components, a large number of 1 2 or 2
2 thermo-optic switches are needed and cascaded to form larger
scale optical matrix switches for an optical network system.
Therefore, it is necessary to develop optical switches with a
compact footprint, low power consumption and low costs
for efficient optical network systems [1,2].
Traditionally, MachZehnder interferometer (MZI)
thermo-optic switches are designed based on silica waveguides
due to low insertion loss, low birefringence, and low fabrication
cost. However, a large switching power on the order of a hun-
dred milliwatts is needed for these silica-based thermo-optic
switches to operate due to the low thermo-optic coefficient
of silica around 105 K 1 . Furthermore, a low-index contrast
limits the waveguide bend radius, and hence the final optical
switch arrays can be the size of 100 cm2 [3]. To circumvent
the high switching power consumption problem, a material
with large thermo-optic coefficient such as silicon is utilized
for the thermo-optic switch. A silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wave-
guide MZI thermo-optic switch has demonstrated a low
index contrast between the silicon core and the low refractive
index cladding allows the optical mode to be highly confined in
the waveguide bend with a micrometer bending radius, and
thus can significantly reduce the size of optical switch arrays.
Folded silicon wire waveguide MZI has been demonstrated to
compact a 6.3 mm long active waveguide length into spiral
geometry with a 65 m circular radius. This folded waveguide
produces a compact size thermo-optic switch and also exponen-
tially decreases switching power with respect to the active wave-
guide length [5]. In addition, another folded SOI waveguide
with a 5.5 mm active waveguide length compacted into a
249 m 12 m rectangular area with microwatt switching
power has been reported [6].
The photonic crystal (PhC) is regarded as a potential struc-
ture for developing ultracompact optical devices due to its
unique properties, such as its tunable photonic bandgap and
slow-light propagation. By using a photonic crystal waveguide
(PhCW), the overall size of the optical switches can be reduced
substantially [7]. MZI thermo-optic switches based on PhCW
with an active waveguide length fewer than 100 m and a milli-
watt switching power have been demonstrated [810]. In ad-
dition, a tunable MZI optical switch based on PhCW has been

0740-3224/17/010183-07 Journal 2017 Optical Society of America

 184 Vol. 34, No. 1 / January 2017 / Journal of the Optical Society of America B
studied by infiltrating liquid crystal into the MZIs arm [11].
Furthermore, a PhCW MZI thermo-optic utilizing the slow-
light properties of PhC and selectively optofluidic infiltration
also has been reported [12]. As aforementioned, there are differ-
ent methods to design a PhCW MZI thermo-optic switch.
However, all the designs have a straight MZIs arm; hence,
the heater length scales linearly with the active waveguide
length, causing the overall device size to be scaled linearly also.
In addition to designing optical switches based on thermo-optic
effect, some researchers utilize Kerr nonlinearity with Fano res-
onance effect, which is also promising in achieving a compact
optical switch [13].
In this numerical work, we design the first small, folded-
path PhCW MZI thermo-optic switch that can increase the
active waveguide length by at least two times compared to
the conventional straight-arm PhCW MZI. By increasing
the number of folded waveguides in the MZIs arm, the active
waveguide length can be further increased while maintaining a
constant heater length. Owing to the long computation time
needed for simulating a very large 3D structure, we only show
short active waveguide length in the folded-path design, which
is sufficient to demonstrate our folded-path PhCW MZI. The
trade-off of simulating only a short active waveguide length is
the difficulty of comparing our results with reported works
[5,6] because our design is not in the optimum active wave-
guide length; hence, the simulated temperature changes to
achieve phase shift at MZIs output will be much larger.
This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the de-
sign of the folded-path MZI thermo-optic switch. In Section 3,
performance of the thermo-optic switch is discussed and pre-
sented. Finally, the conclusion of this work is presented in
Section 4.
2. DESIGN OF FOLDED-PATH MZI THERMO-
OPTIC SWITCH
Figure 1 shows the schematic layout of the proposed ultracom-
pact folded-path PhCW MZI thermo-optic switch. The back-
ground material indicated in green is silicon with a refractive
Fig. 1. Schematic drawing of the folded-path PhCW MZI thermo-
optic switch. Red rectangular box indicates area covered by heater pad,
where the refractive index of the heated arm is modulated. Inset shows
the DH structural defect used in the design to split the guided mode at
Y -junctions and match the guided mode in the bend regions. The
insertion of DH defects is shown in Figs. 2 and 4.
Research Article
index of n
3.4, whereas white represents air region. This tri-
angular lattice air holes PhC slab has an air hole radius of
r
135 nm, lattice constant of
440 nm, and slab thick-
ness of 230 nm. The input signal is split and recombined at the
output by a 1 2 power splitter and a 2 1 power combiner.
The arms of the MZI consist of two 180 waveguide bends
arranged in a folded manner in order to densely fit into the
area covered by a heater pad, as indicated by the red rectangular
box. The separation distance between the waveguides in the
folded-path is constrained by the triangular lattice structure
of the PhC. In the proposed MZI design, the separation dis-
tance between waveguides is approximately 1.032 m. The
bending radius of the 180 waveguide bend is as small as
1.5, allowing a long active waveguide to be densely packed
within the heater volume, and hence, small-size optical switch
arrays are possible. The refractive index of the heated arm is
modulated by assuming electrical power is supplied to the
heater pad. The design layout is in the x-z plane, while the
direction of out-of-plane is along the y axis. In this work,
the computation region is truncated with a perfectly matched
layer, and we used the in-house developed 3D finite difference
time domain (FDTD) program to compute the output power
transmission of the thermo-optic switch when the refractive in-
dex of the heated arm is changed. The resolution of the mesh
size used in the 3D FDTD simulation for all x-y-z directions is
x
y
z
32
13.75 nm. The input source
used in the simulation is a single-wavelength continuous wave
source for TE waves. The input signal is excited after a few
lattice constant distances to the right of the left-side boundary
of the computational region. This allows the light vector
field observation and measurement of the backward-
propagating light.
It is known that the discontinuity of the splitting region and
waveguide bend region causes high reflection and low output
transmission efficiency [14]. Therefore, modification to the
splitting and bend regions in the folded-path MZI is needed
to obtain high-output transmission efficiency and low reflec-
tion in order to ensure proper functioning of the thermo-optic
switch. The inset in Fig. 1 shows the drop hole (DH) structural
defect used in modifying and tuning the discontinuity regions
to achieve equal splitting in Y -junctions and high output trans-
mission at bend regions. There are three main parameters for
the DH defect: r1 represents the radius of the DH, L de-
notes the length of the DH from tip to the center of hole, and
is the bending angle of the DH. Details of the DH air de-
fect have been reported in our previous publications [15,16]. In
the splitting and combining of Y -junctions, a single DH air
defect (at parameters of L
2, r1
0.325r) is positioned
in the center [15], whereas in the 60 bend regions, a single
DH air defect (at parameters of L
1.6, r1
0.1r) is posi-
tioned in the diagonal direction. In the 180 waveguide bend
region, three DH air defects (at parameters of L
2.23,
r1
0.15r) are required to achieve efficient output transmis-
sion through the bend region [16]. The exact position of each
DH air defect inside the folded-path MZI thermo-optic switch
can be seen in Figs. 2 and 4. Fabrication of the DH defect with
its smallest feature equals to the 13.75 nm square mesh used in
the simulation is possible through helium-focused ion beam
 Research Article Vol. 34, No. 1 / January 2017 / Journal of the Optical Society of America B
Fig. 2. Steady-state magnetic field (H y ) distribution at n
3.4
when no changes occur in the refractive index of the heated arm at
1550 nm wavelength. Maximum output transmission is achieved at
zero phase shift.
(HeFiB) technology. A square hole as small as 5 nm has been
fabricated by using HeFiB [17]; therefore, it is safe to presume
that it is feasible to fabricate the DH defect by using HeFiB
technology. The fabrication method for the suspended PhC
slab that is applicable to our suspended type folded-path
PhCW MZI thermo-optic switch has been reported by
Loncar et al. [18]. Based on their research output, our MZI
thermo-optic switch can be fabricated from a SOI wafer,
whereby the thickness of the silicon slab can be adjusted by
oxidizing the surface of the silicon. The silicon dioxide formed
from the oxidation process can then be removed by
using hydrofluoric acid. Next, the polymethyl methacrylate
(PMMA) layer can be spin-coated on the silicon surface before
an electron-beam lithography process to define PhC patterns
into the PMMA, and directly transfers into the silicon slab using
chemically assisted ion beam etching. After the etching process,
the PMMA resist can be removed from the silicon surface. The
final step is to immerse the PhC slab in hydrofluoric acid to re-
move the silicon dioxide layer underneath the waveguide to cre-
ate a suspended structure. Besides the aforementioned
fabrication method, other methods are also available in [19,20].
Thermo-optic switching technology is an attractive ap-
proach due to its ability to achieve fast switching and a good
on/off extinction ratio [5]. Furthermore, thermo-optic switches
have many advantages, such as compact size, large scalability,
easy integration with waveguide dense-wavelength division
multiplexing multiplexers, long-term stability, and polariza-
tion-insensitive characteristics [21,22]. The operating principle
of the thermo-optic switch is based on the interference of the
signals coming from both arms of the MZI. The switch is in
ON stage when constructive interference (maximum output
transmission) occurs and is in OFF stage when destructive in-
terference (minimum output transmission) takes place. A phase
shift of
at the output of MZI is needed to toggle the
ON stage to the OFF stage. To produce such a phase shift,
electrical power is delivered to the heater pad to heat up the
heated arm in order to create thermally induced phase-shift
phenomena. The thermal-induced phase shift depends on
the thermo-optic coefficient of the material d nd T , temper-
ature change T , and the length of the active waveguide,
185
La , or the heated waveguide length LH [6,23]. The phase shift
is larger when the values of d nd T and T are larger and
when the LH is longer. Silicon material is normally used for
the thermo-optic switch substrate due to its large thermo-optic
coefficient; thus, low power applied to the heater pad is capable
of causing a large change in the refractive index of the heated
arm. In the conventional straight-arm MZI design, accumu-
lated phase shift increases linearly with the length of the heated
waveguide. The longer the LH , the lower the T needed to
achieve phase shift. However, the electrical power needed
to produce the T is not reduced because the heater pad
volume scales with the LH , and hence, more power is needed
to maintain a given T [5]. Low switching power for long
heated waveguide length can be realized by using a folded-path
or densely packed waveguide design in the MZI arm regions. In
the folded-path design, as shown in Fig. 1, La
N  1LH ,
where N is the number of waveguide folds. From Fig. 1, the La
is folded two times and fit into the area covered by the heater,
assuming a heater width of 5 m, as fabricated in [8].
Similarly, for a heater with a width of 10 m, as fabricated
in [5], the La can be folded six times in the form of 180 wave-
guide bend geometry. Then, compared to the conventional
straight-arm MZI, the size of the heater pad for our folded-path
PhCW MZI can be reduced by two times for the heater pad with
5 m width and six times for the heater pad with 10 m width
while having a similar La. This reduction in the heater pad size
produces a smaller size optical switch, which brings it closer to a
compact optical device. In addition, this folded-path geometry
implies that the active waveguide length can be increased
independently of the heater size and therefore can efficiently
reduce the switching power [5]. Furthermore, in the folded-path
heated arm, the laterally diffused heat from the heater pad
contributes to the temperature rise in the adjacent waveguides,
which does not happen in the conventional straight-arm design
[5]. This further reduces the switching power.
Even though the silicon nanowire waveguide as reported in
[5] can produce a similar device that is smaller than the PhC
waveguide, there are certain capabilities in PhC that make it
superior to normal waveguides. The optical bandgap of the
PhC can be tailored at any frequency range. Here, it is even
more fantastic that it can be tuned by a small temperature
change. This sensitive tunability feature to physical heat
properties cannot be found in normal waveguides.
3. PERFORMANCE OF FOLDED-PATH PHCW
MZI THERMO-OPTIC SWITCH
In the 3D FDTD simulation, we treat the folded-path PhCW
MZI thermo-optic switch as a silicon planar PhC suspended in
the air, where the MZI is sandwiched by air layers for strong
vertical confinement due to a large index contrast. The thick-
ness of the upper and bottom air layers used in the simulation
are 730 nm each to reduce the radiation losses. Since this
work focuses on the nature of the hypothetical MZI
thermo-optic switch, therefore, in our simulation, we do not
take into consideration electronic circuitry, heater design, heat-
ing efficiency, and thermal conductivity of the material in our
simulation. We only focus on the main effect of changing of the
refractive index and phase by changing the temperature
 186 Vol. 34, No. 1 / January 2017 / Journal of the Optical Society of America B Research Article

through the thermo-optic effect in a compact PhC structure. In

other words, only the sensitivity of the thermo-optic switch to
tiny variations in temperature is of concern. This simplified
simulation allows us to focus on the theoretical study of the
folded-path PhCW MZI thermo-optic switch. This theoretical
study can lead to some potential applications, such as compact
optical modulator and compact thermal sensor using miniaturi-
zation of the optical guiding system. Furthermore, we do not
include electrical power applied to the heater pad in our FDTD
algorithm. We mimic the effect of applying electrical power to
the heated arm by only increasing the refractive index of the
heated arm and also the area covered by the heater pad, as
outlined in Fig. 1.
Figure 2 indicates the steady-state magnetic field (H y ) Fig. 3. Output transmission versus changes in refractive index of
distribution of the folded-path PhCW MZI thermo-optic the heated arm at wavelength of 1550 nm. Minimum output
switch at 1550 nm wavelength when there is no refractive index transmission occurs at n
3.419 for
.
difference between both MZI arms (no electrical power is
applied to the heated arm). In our simulation, only TE waves
are considered; therefore, steady-state electric field (E y ) distri- indirectly increases the wave vector mismatching.
bution is not shown. At
0, the signal from both arms is Consequently, changes in the heated arm refractive index for
interfered constructively, producing a maximum output trans- phase shift, 2 phase shift, 3 phase shift, and so on, will
mission of 78%. Most of the power loss dispenses from the not be the same n
n
m ; m
2; 3 (integers).
DH air defect out-of-plane loss is due to lack of index contrast The steady-state magnetic field (H y ) distribution at heated
for vertical light confinement on the DH air defects. The total arm refractive index of n
3.419 for phase shift is depicted
out-of-plane loss, including propagation loss from simulation, in Fig. 4. By comparing the electromagnetic (EM) field at the
is 18.9%, whereas a 1.3% loss comes from the DH defect at end of the active waveguide length in the heated arm to the
each splitter region and a 2.5% loss comes from the three DH same position in the MZI reference arm, we can see that
defects at each 180 waveguide bend region. From the work the EM field is of exactly opposite magnitude (red indicates
reported by Frandsen et al. [24], low loss can be achieved positive amplitude; blue indicates negative amplitude) to each
for a splitter with a design slightly similar to the DH defect. other. These opposite magnitude EM signals from both arms
However, the actual loss characteristics are dependent on the interfere destructively at the 2 1 output combiner. Therefore,
design. Therefore, we cannot provide the actual loss character- negligible EM field with output transmission as low as 1.5% is
istics, since there is no experimental work reported for the DH observed at the output of the folded-path PhCW MZI; hence,
defect. Nevertheless, the out-of-plane losses can be suppressed the thermo-optic switch is in the OFF stage. From the thermo-
via cladding the PhC slab with 3D woodpile PhC [25]. In ad- optic coefficient, the temperature changes needed to increase
dition, by properly adjusting the air gap between the slab and the heated arm refractive index to n
3.419 is predicted by
the substrate, the losses can be substantially reduced [26]. From the following equation [27]:
the magnetic field distribution, utilization of the DH air defect
at the discontinuity regions ensures single-mode operation and dn
suppresses higher-order mode propagation. Afterward, we re- nT 
no  T ; (1)
dT
peat the simulation by increasing the refractive index of the area
covered by the heater pad. The calculated output transmission
efficiency versus changes in refractive index of the heated arm is
plotted in Fig. 3. Minimum output transmission of 1.5% oc-
curs at a heated arm refractive index of n
3.419. This shows
that the index difference of n
0.019 is necessary to produce
a
in the output of the folded-path PhCW MZI.
As observed in Fig. 3, further increasing the heated arm
refractive index to n
3.44 returned the output transmission
efficiency back to maximal. Nevertheless, we will not expect a
similar output transmission of 78% to happen at
2,
due to a higher index contrast at the interface between the input
waveguide and the heated waveguide, which leads to the incre-
ment of output reflection coefficient. In addition, the DH air
defects in the 180 waveguide bends of the heated arm are op-
timized for high-output transmission by matching the wave Fig. 4. Steady-state magnetic field (H y ) distribution when refractive
vector between the straight waveguide and the bend region index of heated arm is increased to n
3.419 at 1550 nm wavelength.
at n
3.4. Increasing the refractive index of the heated arm Minimum output transmission at phase shift.
 Research Article Vol. 34, No. 1 / January 2017 / Journal of the Optical Society of America B 187

where no is the initial refractive index of the material before any

changes in temperature. With silicons thermo-optic coefficient
of 1.86 104 K 1 [28], T
102 K is predicted to in-
crease the refractive index to n
3.419 from no
3.4 based
on Eq. (1). Compared with the reported folded-path MZI op-
tical switches, where T
0.67 K to achieve phase shift for
6.1 mm long active waveguide length [5] and T
21 K to
achieve phase shift for a 5.5 mm long active waveguide length
[6], our design needs much higher temperature changes to
achieve phase shift. Larger T in our design is due to short
active waveguide length of 25 m used in the simulation.
Constraint on computer resources to simulate longer active
waveguide length means we cannot perform longer active wave-
guide length simulation. However, T for our design can be as
small as or comparable with the reported T if we consider
similar active waveguide length with the reported one.
The aforementioned FDTD numerical results are con-
firmed by considering the following equation for phase shift
calculation [12]:
2
 0  La ; (2)

where and 0 are the normalized wave vectors for unheated
(reference) and heated arms, respectively. In our design, the to-
tal active waveguide length is La
56.4, where we consider
the active length for eachp180 PhCW bend region approxi-
mately equal to 2  3 3. From Eq. (2), ( 0 ) must Fig. 5. Band diagram of fundamental even guided mode at n
3.4
be 0.0088 in order to achieve phase shift at La
56.4. (red solid line) and n
3.419 (blue dashed line) for (a) straight wave-
To obtain the normalized wave vectors of the unheated and guide and (b) bend region with DH defect of the folded-path PhCW
heated arms in the folded-path PhCW MZI, we use the plane MZI arm. The corresponding supercells for calculation of band dia-
grams are shown to the right of the band diagram. The horizontal
wave expansion method based on MIT Photonic-Bands free-
black dashed lines indicate operating normalized frequency of
ware [29] to calculate the band diagrams of the straight wave- 0.28387 used in the simulation.
guide [Fig. 5(a)] and bend region [Fig. 5(b)] of the folded-path
PhCW MZI arm. The corresponding supercells for calculation
of the band diagrams are included also. At a normalized
frequency of
0.28387, Fig. 5(a) shows the difference design can achieve micron second level by increasing the total
in normalized wave vectors for heated arm changes from active waveguide length and the number of waveguide folds
n
3.4 to n
3.419 is approximately 0.0082, whereas compacted into a small footprint. This is because with longer
Fig. 5(b) shows a normalized wave vector difference of 0
active waveguide length, a lower T is needed to achieve
0.0084 inside the bend region with the DH defect. Both cal- phase shift at the MZIs output.
culated normalized wave vectors are close to the theoretical The robustness of the MZI thermo-optic switch depends on
value of 0
0.0088. the tolerance on fabrication error. A fabrication error to the DH
From Fig. 5, the wave vector of the operating normalized defect will affect the output transmission achievable by the
frequency is sensitive to the changes in the refractive index. MZI thermo-optic switch. The tolerance analysis of the DH
This observation has been explained via perturbation theory defect used in the splitter and bend region of the MZI
in [30]. Researchers showed that by lowering the refractive index thermo-optic switch while maintaining high transmission has
value, the normalized frequency shifts to higher value. On the been presented in our published works [15,16].
other hand, as the average effective refractive index value is in- The design of the metal heater affects the heating efficiency
creased, the normalized frequency shifts to a smaller value, and between the heater and the silicon active waveguide of the MZI
hence, the changes in wave vector value. In addition, Tang and thermo-optic switch. Without experimental results, the pos-
co-workers show that field localization effect and slow-light sible losses induced by the presence of the metal heater cannot
effect in the periodic nanostructure also caused the normalized be estimated properly. Nevertheless, various heater designs have
frequency to vary with the effective refractive index [31,32]. been reported to improve heating efficiency and hence reduce
In the simulation, we cannot estimate accurate transient power consumption [6,33,34]. Therefore, ideally, we can apply
time because we did not take into account effects such as effi- one of these similar heater designs to our MZI thermo-optic
ciency of heat transfer from heater to the waveguides, thermal switch to have similar low heater-induced losses. In addition,
conductivity, diffusivity, and other factors. Typical response direct contact between the heater and the suspended silicon
time is on the micron second to millisecond levels, depending active waveguide structure such as in our proposed design
on the material and heaters design. The response time of our can increase the heating efficiency also. It has been shown that
 188 Vol. 34, No. 1 / January 2017 / Journal of the Optical Society of America B
Fig. 6. Band diagram of two parallel waveguides separated by three
rows of air holes. Red solid line indicates odd supermode and blue
dashed line indicates even supermode. The minimum coupler length
is calculated at normalized frequency of 0.28387.
power consumption can be significantly reduced by 20% [33]
with deep etched trenches for heat isolation and by 98% when
suspended structures are used to provide an isolation layer for
heat dissipation [34].
In the simulation, the heated arm and reference arm are near
each other, with distance separation of 15 m, which might
cause an optical cross talk in actual devices if the heating process
affects the reference arm temperature. To avoid that problem for
practical consideration, we can increase the waveguide length in
between the 1 2 power splitter and the folded-path waveguide
to obtain sufficient distance separation between the heated arm
and reference arm to minimize heat transfers to the reference
arm during the heating process. In addition, air gap or air
trenches can be etched on the central region between the heated
arm and reference arm, and also on both sides of the heated arm
and reference arm to further reduce thermal cross talk [4,34].
In the proposed MZI thermo-optic switch, the waveguides in
the folded path are parallel to each other, which can cause cross
talk to happen. The minimum coupler length required for the
cross talk to happen equals jK even K odd j, where K even is the
wave vector for the even supermode, and K odd is the wave vector
for the odd supermode [35]. By calculating the band diagram
from a supercell consisting of two parallel waveguides separated
by three rows of air holes, as shown in Fig. 6, the minimum
coupler length is approximately 122 (53.7 m) long for the
proposed MZI thermo-optic switch. In addition, taking into
consideration that a small perturbation to the separation distance
between waveguides in the folded path might occur, we repeated
the band diagram calculation with a larger and smaller lattice
constant to predict the effect on the minimum coupler length.
From the calculation, we found that a 5% decrease in the lattice
constant causes the minimum coupler length to become 385,
because the difference between both even and odd supermodes is
smaller. On the other hand, a 5% increase in the lattice constant
reduces the minimum coupler length to 68 only.
4. CONCLUSION
We have presented the 3D FDTD numerical simulation on an
ultracompact folded-path PhCW MZI thermo-optic switch.
Research Article
The folded-path PhCW MZI arm is formed by two
0.66 m bend radius 180 PhCW bends arranged to densely
fit into the area covered by a heater pad. With the folded-path
design, the length of the 5 m wide heater pad can be reduced
by two times for the same active waveguide length compared to
the conventional straight-arm MZI design. Our simulation
shows an increase of 0.019 in the refractive index of the heated
MZI arm or equal to a temperature rise of 102 K, which is
sufficient to produce a phase shift at the MZI output in order
to toggle the thermo-optic switch to the OFF stage. Finally, to
avoid cross talk from happening between the waveguides in the
folded-path MZIs arm, the length of each parallel waveguide in
the folded-path should be less than 53.7 m long.
Acknowledgment. The authors would like to thank
Professor Toshio Kambayashi from Nagaoka University of
Technology, Japan for his technical help.
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