A High-Speed Silicon Ring Modulator with a Large Working Wavelength Range

With the advantages of high speed, small size, and easy integration, the silicon photonic resonant ring modulator has gradually become a critical device for emerging integrated optical platforms. Ring modulators are primarily used in optical communications, optical computing, artificial intelligence, and other fields. In this work, the proposed ring modulator can operate in both the O- and C-bands. The 3 dB electro-optical (EO) bandwidth of the ring modulator is 39 GHz and 34 GHz at −4 V in the O-band and C-band, respectively. The modulation efficiency of the device is 0.92 V·cm and 0.95 V·cm in the O-band and C-band, respectively. The eye diagram of an optical output signal from the device is tested using a 100 Gbit/s non-return-to-zero (NRZ) input signal with a 2.5 Vpp in both the O-band and C-band. The modulation speed can reach 140 Gb/s and 120 Gb/s in the O-band and C-band with four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) formats at a voltage swing of 2.5 Vpp, respectively.