2024 · 06·IEEE OECC 2024·Melbourne

An SOI-based ultra-compact dual-mode variable optical attenuator based on inverse design

A. Sun, X. Deng, S. Xing, et al.
Fudan University · Zhangjiang Lab

Proceedings Scholar Related work
TL;DR An SOI ultra-compact dual-mode variable optical attenuator (DM-VOA) that uniformly attenuates the TE0 and TE1 modes. Built on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with the thermo-optic effect, the whole device is only 248 µm long (its inverse-designed dual-mode splitter just 6 µm). It achieves ~60 dB maximum attenuation for both modes at a total power of 30.7 mW.
inverse designsilicon photonics
SOI dual-mode VOA
First page of the paper. Follow the DOI above for the published version.

Highlights

  • Dual-mode VOA uniformly attenuating TE0 and TE1; ~60 dB max attenuation at 30.7 mW
  • MZI + thermo-optic structure; total device length only 248 µm
  • Inverse-designed dual-mode 3 dB splitter at 2.88 × 6 µm² (2–3 orders smaller than MMIs), IL 2.2 / 1.7 dB
  • Analog and digital topology optimization (ADTO); CMOS-compatible

Citation

A. Sun et al., "An SOI-based ultra-compact dual-mode variable optical attenuator based on inverse design," IEEE OECC 2024, Melbourne, Jun. 2024.