A 2×2 photonic crystal waveguide thermo-optic switch

This work introduces a 2×2 silicon thermo-optical switch based on photonic crystal waveguides. Photonic crystal waveguides (PCWs) were used to replace conventional channel waveguides in the phase shifters of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). This device was fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. The active length of the PCWs-based phase shifter was only 50μm. Because of the slow light effect of PCWs, the heat needed to generate a phase shift of π reduced dramatically. The experiment results showed that the power needed for phase shifter of π is 6 times less than that of conventional MZI based optical switches.