Broadband optical characterization and modeling of photonic crystal waveguides for silicon optical interconnects

Optical properties of a straight 50-row-long photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) are reported. This waveguide is obtained by removing one row of air holes in a triangular lattice two-dimensional photonic crystal etched on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. Transmission measurements are performed on a wide wavelength range (1.15–1.75 μm) with an external white light source. It is found that the experimental data are in very good agreement with both the theoretical transmission calculated by a two-dimensional finite difference time domain method and the theoretical photonic band structure. We show a coupling factor higher than 60% between a monomode ridge waveguide and the PCW.