Design of silicon-based two-dimensional photonic integrated circuits: XOR gate

In this work the authors investigate the design of an XOR gate based on two-dimensionalsilicon photonic crystals. The XOR gate is formed by two dual-ring resonators placed between two waveguides; each secondary waveguide is united in a vertical waveguide, through a specific Y branch, where the waveguide contains the main output. We use 45 degrees ring resonators, before the output, to improve gate efficiency. The optical properties and the distribution field E-z for the proposed gate have been calculated by the finite difference time domain technique. The response time of our logic 'XOR' gate is <7.2 ps. This photonic gate is of great interest for several applications such as in electronics, in data processing and also in cryptography.