Light and Electric Hybrid Controlling Optical Phase Shifters Using Metal‐Printing Ionic‐Gel Polymer Waveguide for Photonic‐Electronic Integrated Circuits

Abstract In this work, light and electric hybrid controlling optical phase shifters are proposed using an ionic‐gel polymer waveguide through the metal‐printing technique. The metal‐printing ionic‐gel polymer optical waveguide could generate conductive free ions by photothermal or electrothermal stimulation. Based on the ion relaxation dynamics of the gel polymer electrolytes, the multimode interference (MMI) type optical waveguide phase shifters controlled by external 360 nm pumping light and internal electrode heaters are designed and fabricated. The dynamic performances of the optical phase shifters are measured by light and electric hybrid tuning approaches. For near‐infrared C‐band signal wavelengths, the tuning efficiency of the optical phase shifters is obtained as 10.3 nm mW −1 using light driving and as 0.8 dB mW −1 through electric driving, respectively. The multi‐modal controlling technique is suitable for realizing a monolithic hybrid optical integrated system of photonic and electronic integrated circuits (ICs).