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Buried-Electrode Hybrid Bonded Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Electro-Optic Mach-Zehnder Modulators

Kodigala, Ashok; Valdez, Forrest; Mere, Viphretuo; Mookherjea, Shayan; Boynton, Nicholas; Friedmann, Thomas A.; Arterburn, Shawn C.; Dallo, Christina M.; Pomerene, Andrew P.; Starbuck, Andrew L.; Lentine, Anthony L.; Trotter, Douglas C.

Hybrid bonded silicon nitride thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) at 1310 nm were designed with metal coplanar waveguide electrodes buried in the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) chip. The MZM devices showed greatly improved performance compared to earlier devices of a similar design, and similar performance to comparable MZM devices with gold electrodes made on top of the TFLN layer. Both devices achieve a 3-dB electro-optic bandwidth greater than 110 GHz and voltage-driven optical extinction ratios greater than 28 dB. Half-wave voltage-length products ( Vπ L) of 2.8 and 2.5 Vċ cm were measured for the 0.5 and 0.4 cm long buried metal and top gold electrode MZMs, respectively.