Design Optimization of Polymer Electro-Optic Modulators Using Inverted-Rib Optical Waveguide

Abstract

Polymer electro-optic modulators are essential elemental components for opto-sensors and optical fiber communication system [1, 2, 3]. In this paper, we designed a low-loss polymer electro-optic modulator with an inverted-rib waveguide structure based on new fluorinated polyimides electro-optic materials, which has more advantages in the preparation and device performance parameters. Also we calculated the key modulator parameters, such as half wave voltage(V _π ), characteristic impedance(Z _m ), microwave equivalent refractive index(N _m ), bandwidth(B _w ), loss coefficient (α _o ) in detail, according to different width, thickness and gap of electrode, then an optimized polymer electro-optic modulator structure with CPW electrode system was reported in theory. Finally, the simulation results show that the designed EOM has a low loss coefficient (α _o ) of about 0.08 dB/cm/GHz ^0.5 with a high frequency of 10 GHz at 1.55 μm.