Capacitor-embedded 0.54 pJ/bit silicon-slot photonic crystal waveguide modulator

A high-speed compact silicon modulator based on the lateral capacitor configuration is experimentally demonstrated with low-power consumption and 3 dB modulation depth. The capacitor layout is introduced to scale down the total modulator capacitance to 30 x 10(-15) F, which effectively reduces the rf power consumption to 0.54 pJ/bit. Exploiting the slow group velocity of light in the slot photonic crystal waveguides, the device reported herein exhibits higher modulation efficiency than conventional capacitor modulator and provides a V pi L figure of merit of 0.18 V cm at the wavelength of 1.548 nm. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America