Simulation of hybrid silicon nitride/polymer Mach-Zehnder optical modulator beyond 170 GHz

In this paper, a hybrid Mach-Zehnder optical modulator is proposed based on silicon nitride/organic polymer waveguides, which expected to break through the performance bottleneck of silicon-based by exploiting low-loss transmission property nitride waveguides and excellent modulation organic polymers. For reduction loss ease photonic packaging, perfectly vertical bidirectional grating couplers are utilized for both input/output coupling power splitting/combining. Thus, interferometer can be constructed with back-to-back configuration such couplers. With apodization, coupler achieve simulated efficiency 70%. To bridge longitudinal adiabatic mode-spot converter 99.2% was designed. high-β donor-π bridge-accepter molecule YLD-124 combined HD-BB-OH as host design example. The inverted ridge structure realized processes silica cladding etching, spin coating or microfluidic trench filling polymer. Following design, we numerically demonstrate nitride-polymer 1.57 Vcm Electric-Optical bandwidth 174 GHz. total insertion less than 5.74 dB, including two losses about 3.08 dB.