Photonic crystal nanosecond wavelength switches

Abstract

We present our design and fabrication methodology of planar photonic crystal wavelength switches and the optical micro-bench surrounding them. The core device is a channel add-drop multiplexer (CADM) whose pass/transfer element can be turned off and on in tens of nanoseconds. The photonic crystal consists of a regular triangular array of SiO₂ -filled holes in an amorphous Ge₃Si film. The film is sandwiched between two SiO₂ cladding layers. The pass and transfer buses consist of linear extended defects in the crystal, with the pass bus and each drop bus separated by a cavity resonator defect tuned to each wavelength. There is a small region where an ECD-designed chalcogenide alloy is incorporated into each resonator. Switching is accomplished by changing the structure of the chalcogenide between amorphous and crystalline, using a short wavelength diode laser. The optical bench consists of photonic wire waveguides formed in the Ge₃Si film and deep trenches in an underlying thick SOI film to accommodate bonded access fibers, both features being photolithographically co-aligned to the photonic crystal array. This, along with our impedance-matching interface designs, assures that there is low input-output power loss. The local reconfigurability in effect elevates the CADM to an all-optical router. Sub-100 nanosecond latency enables packet-level discernment. The large difference in optical constants of the two chalcogenide phases provides high on-off contrast (low crosstalk). The stability of the two phases gives complete latching nonvolatility. Our current progress in building and testing prototypes of our switches is also presented.