A Study On Multimode Interference Photonic Devices Based On Ⅲ-Ⅴ Semiconductor Multiple Quantum Wells

With the development of information technology, optical communication, as an advanced subject, will become the key issue among the science and technology fields in the 21-century. Photonic devices are critical for the quality of optical communication and improvement of communication efficiency. Based on the III-V semiconductor multiple quantum well (MQW) material system, various kinds of Planar Lightwave Circuits (PLCs) with low power consumption and ultra high speed can be realized. In this paper, the novel tunable InP/InGaAsP MQW multimode interference (MMI) couples as well as MMI coupler-based optical modulators/switches are proposed, analyzed, fabricated and tested.Firstly, optical networks and photonic devices, and their applications are reviewed, and then the research progress of all kinds of planar waveguide couplers is summarized. The MMI devices including characters, research status and drawbacks are described in detail. The theory for general, restrict and un-rectangle waveguide self-imaging effect are presented. The principle of generalized N×N multimode interference Mach-Zehnder optical switch is proposed and its optical transmission model is given.Based on the physical effects of waveguide materials, the analysis models for traveling-wave and lumped electrodes are put forward. The electrical field distributions within the waveguide are plotted and the interaction between the optical and microwave signals is discussed. At last, the tunable InP/InGaAsP MQW MMI-based 2×2 coupler, Butterfly 2×2 coupler, 4×4 coupler, 1×4 cascade coupler and 1×1 and 2×2 generalized Mach-Zehnder optical modulator/switcher are designed and optimized. The samples are fabricated by using domestic techniques and tested by using Agilent 81910A photon all parameters test system. The expected functions of present devices are observed successfully. Moreover, the tested results are good agreed with theoretical results.