Ultrafast Electro-Optic Spatial Light Modulators on Silicon

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop highly-integrated and ultrafast spatial light modulators on the silicon nanophotonic platform. This modulator will have a high modulation speed over 10 Gbit/s and a low power consumption below 0.2 pJ/bit, and it can be manufactured at low cost by commercial silicon microelectronics foundries. The approach is based on a novel perturbation-induced diffractive coupling between the highly-confined optical mode in an integrated resonator and the normal-incidence free-space waves. Silicon photonic-crystal cavities will be employed, which have embedded p-i-n junctions for electro-optic resonance tuning that leads to amplitude or phase modulations of normal-incidence laser beams. The proposed research demonstrates an entirely new way to optically access the integrated optical resonators. This novel coupling scheme allows two-dimensional (2D) planar photonic circuits to manipulate the propagation of normal-incidence optical beams, which bridges the gap between the fast-developing integrated photonics technology and conventional 3D optical systems. The proposed device has the unique combination of high data bandwidth and high integration capability. As the key element in a free-space optical system, this device can potentially revive the interest in free-space optical signal and data processing, which has been hindered by the speed of SLMs in the past. The proposed research will be closely integrated with classroom teaching and outreach activities where students learn through examples from this project. Demonstrating the wide range of applications of silicon photonics can help to attract or retain students, especially female and minority students, to this field.