Demonstration of an ultra-compact 8-channel sinusoidal silicon waveguide array for optical phased array

• Published in: Optics letters Vol. 47; no. 2; p. 226
• Main Authors: Yi, Xiaogen, Zhang, Yibo, Zeng, Huiying, Gao, Sai, Guo, Shuting, Qiu, Ciyuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 15.01.2022
• ISSN: 1539-4794
• DOI: 10.1364/OL.442028

Here we demonstrate an ultra-compact 8-channel sinusoidal silicon waveguide array for an optical phased array. In our device, based on sinusoidal bending, the cross talk (CT) between waveguides can be efficiently reduced with a waveguide pitch of only 695 nm. For the transverse electric (TE) mode, the simulation results show that the insertion loss (IL) of the 100-µm-long device is 0.1 dB and the CT between all waveguides is lower than -25 dB at 1550 nm. In the measurements, an IL of less than 1 dB and CT lower than -18 dB are obtained. Since the pitch is related to the beam-steering range and power consumption of the optical phased array, such an ultra-compact device could potentially be a good candidate to build the emitter for an energy-efficient optical phased array with a large field of view.