A hybrid annealed proton exchange (APE) waveguide with a vertically integrated arsenic trisulfide (As₂S₃) waveguide on a lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) substrate is used to create an optical phased array (OPA) that allows for the non-mechanical steering of 1550 nm light on an integrated optic platform. The high electro-optic coefficient of the x-cut y-propagating LiNbO₃ (r33 = 30.8 pm/V) is utilized by electrode structures fabricated on the LiNbO₃ substrate to create a low-power, lowloss beam steering with high-speed bandwidths, capable of 10 GHz and larger as demonstrated by commercial LiNbO₃ modulators. The As₂S₃ waveguide is introduced because of its high refractive index, which leads to a highly confined optical mode. Design and fabrication are presented for a large full width steering angle of 34°, representing an order of magnitude improvement over low-confinement, diffused LiNbO₃ waveguides and two orders of magnitude improvement over other reported LiNbO₃ OPAs.

Date Published: 14 September 2016
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9970, Optics and Photonics for Information Processing X, 99700H (14 September 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2237806

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9970:
Optics and Photonics for Information Processing X
Khan M. Iftekharuddin; Abdul A. S. Awwal; Mireya García Vázquez; Andrés Márquez; Mohammad A. Matin, Editor(s)