Design, Fabrication and Analysis of InP-InGaAsP Traveling-Wave Electro-Absorption Modulators

Abstract: External modulators will become key components in fiberoptical communica- tion systems operating at 40Gbit/s andhigher bitrates. Semiconductor electro- absorption (EA)modulators are promising candidates because of their high-speed potential, and their process compatibility with thecorresponding semi- conductor laser light sources. Thetraveling-wave (TW) electrode concept for electro-opticmodulators has been used for a long time in order to resolvethe con°ict between high modulation depth and highmodulation bandwidth. Re- cently, it has been adopted for EAmodulators as well.This thesis presents the work carried out on design,fabrication and analysis of traveling-wave EA modulators(TWEAM) based on InP-InGaAsP. The lengths of TWEAM arecomparable to the lengths of their lumped counterparts. Theexperimental data of this work were analyzed in order show thatthe traveling- wave concept results in better performance evenfor short EA modulators. One key issue is the impedancematching. The low intrinsic characteristic modulator impedancehas to be matched with a corresponding load. In this case, theTW con figuration leads to a much higher bandwidth than for alumped EA modulator with the same length and the same connectedload.An InP process was developed allowing the fabrication ofTWEAM with integrated termination resistors. Experimentalmicrowave properties were ob- tained for different TWEAMgeometries. It is reported on long TWEAM that showstate-of-the-art bandwidth. A 450&#956m long TWEAM reached43GHz, and 67GHz (beyond characterization limit) were indicatedfor a 250&#956m device. The experimental results onmicrowave properties were compared to full-wave, and circuitmodel simulations. The analysis reveals an impedance bandwidthtrade- off for the cross sectional electrode configuration.Results of a new high-impedance design in form of asegmented TWEAM are presented. The devices were processedwithin the frame of this work and record bandwidth performanceis reported. At 50&#937­ impedance a bandwidth in the90GHz region was indicated.