Broadband and Sensitive Lateral Optical Phase Modulators using 1D-PhC for Integrated Si-Photonics

Design of broadband optical phase modulators (PM) with improved sensitivity is presented in this paper using lateral coupled micro-strip (CMS) driving electrodes and a photonic crystal (PhC). The 1D PhC structure consists of alternating sub-micometer layers of PMMI and Air materials. This 1D PhC is placed as a superstrate to the optical core and contributes to a slowlightwave structure for a 200fs optical pulse at the center wavelength of 1550 nm. Both optical BPM and FTDT along with HFSS simulation results demonstrate a 3dB bandwidth of 54GHz and about 100% improvement of the figure of merit of $V_{\mathbf{\pi \, }} \times L$ of the PM over optical bandwidth 1530 to 1570 nm wavelength.