Demonstration of ultra-compact and low-loss 2 × 2 silicon thermo-optic switches based on a mode-conversion nanobeam cavity

Optical switch is an essential component in integrated photonic circuits. A mode-conversion nanobeam cavity (MCNC) coupled with two waveguides has been employed to realize ultra-compact and low-loss 2 × 2 thermo-optic switches in silicon-on-insulator. This system can exhibit either Fano or Lorentzian lineshape in transmission spectra, dependent on the coupling structure. It has a low dropping loss, and two outputs are in the same direction, owing to the unidirectional coupling between the resonant mode and bus waveguides. Here, we have demonstrated a high-performance 2 × 2 Fano switch with a bandwidth of 5.2 nm and a footprint of only 35.5 × 1 µm 2 . The insertion loss (IL) and crosstalk (CT) are 0.7 dB and −54.1 dB in the bar state, respectively, while the IL and CT are 0.9 dB and −17.4 dB in the cross-state, respectively. In addition, 2 × 2 optical switches with a Lorentzian transmission lineshape have also been realized and then applied to construct a four-channel reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM). Through thermal tuning, the ROADM has achieved a channel spacing of 200 GHz or 400 GHz, with an inter-channel CT below −12.3 dB or −17.2 dB, respectively. To our knowledge, we have reported the first demonstrations of 2 × 2 Fano switch and ROADM based on MCNCs. The proposed 2 × 2 switches will find potential applications in advanced photonic integrated circuits.