Characterization of integrated Bragg gratings on silicon-on-insulator rib waveguides

Waveguide based Bragg grating devices have the potential of integration with passive or active optical components. A narrow bandwidth Bragg reflection filter or Fabry-Perot resonant structures can be realised using the approach of periodic refractive index modulation in waveguide gratings to form reflective structures. Most authors have considered 1st order Bragg gratings with periods of the order of 228nm operating at 1550nm but at the expense of complexity and high cost of fabrication. This paper describes the design of Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) rib waveguides operating in the single mode regime that exhibit low polarisation dependence. A rigorous leaky mode propagation method (LMP) has been used to investigate the influence of etch depth in 3rd order Bragg gratings on the reflectance and bandwidth in the waveguides.