Etched-Diffraction-Grating-Based Planar Waveguide Demultiplexer on Silicon-on-Insulator

An optical wavelength demultiplexer with the etched diffraction grating (EDG) on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) material is demonstrated. Fabricated by the wet-anisotropic-etching method, 90° turning mirrors are used to bend waveguides, and the size of the EDG-based demultiplexer is minimized to only 16×2.5 mm2. The crosstalk is below −16 dB. The on-chip loss is about 9.97 dB, which is composed of about 8.72 dB excess loss and 1.25 dB diffraction loss. The polarization-dependent central wavelength shift is below 0.13 nm, and the polarization-dependent loss is about 0.35 dB. The sources of the crosstalk and loss are discussed in details, and the related measures to improve the performance are also presented.