We propose germanium-rich silicon germanium waveguides as a basic building block for polarization insensitive circuitry on silicon. In this work a detailed study of SiGe waveguides geometries is performed to find optimal parameters to simultaneously obtain low polarization sensitivity and single mode operation at λ=1.55μm. The polarization dependence of the effective index, group index and dispersion coefficient is investigated. Optimized geometries are tolerant to fabrication errors and can be realized with the current state of the art CMOS technology. As a next step polarization insensitive multimode interference structures have been designed.

Date Published: 17 May 2017
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 10242, Integrated Optics: Physics and Simulations III, 102420T (17 May 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2265431

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10242:
Integrated Optics: Physics and Simulations III
Pavel Cheben; Jiří Čtyroký; Iñigo Molina-Fernández, Editor(s)