Design And Research Of Polymer Optical Waveguide Ring Modulator

As the core component of the optical information transmission link, the electro-optic modulator has important applications in optical communications, optical sensing, optical information processing. The traditional electro-optic modulator is high cost and difficult to further improve modulation rate and bandwidth. So, high performance and low cost electro-optic modulator has become one of research hot spot in the world. Polymer materials have the advantages of adjustable refractive index, large electro-optic coefficient, low cost, good process compatibility and easy to integrate. Therefore, they have great potential in the preparation of high-performance electro-optic modulator. Polymer optical waveguide ring modulator further combines the advantages of ring resonator, such as high Q value and compact structure. The size and power consumption is greatly reduced in such modulator, so it has more broad applications. In this paper, a ring resonator based electro-optic modulator with new structure was designed, including ring cavity, optical waveguide, electrode and microwave probe. Their optimal design of structure parameters and study of preparation technology were discussed.First, the structure of the modulator was designed. The performance parameters, such as sensitivity, modulation bandwidth, were analyzed in theory and promoted by parameter optimization. Then, the bend inverted-rib waveguide structure was analyzed theoretical by effective index method and the single-mode structure was achieved. Numerical calculation method was used to calculate the bending loss of inverted-ridge waveguide. The optimization parameters of bend inverted-ridge waveguide were obtained. With the given parameters of bend inverted-ridge waveguide, the electrode of electro-optic modulator was optimizatimized. Finally, the microwave probe, one key component of test system, was also designed. By using the software HFSS, the performance of the probe with different structure parameters was studied.In experiment, the preparation technology of waveguide and electrode were introduced. The key process was optimized to lay the foundation for preparation of high-performance electro-optic modulator. Moreover, the microwave probe for test system was prepared and its performance was tested simply.