Switching power improvement of hybrid polymer-silica based MMI thermo-optical switch

• Main Authors: Yaacob, M. M., Ibrahim, M. H., Mohd. Kassim, Norazan, Mohd. Supaat, A. S., Mohammad, A. B.
• Format: Article
• Published: National Institute of Research and Development for Optoelectronics 2009
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/13125/

A new hybrid polymer-silica multimode interference (MMI) switch with single heater electrode is demonstrated. A heater electrode is used to change the refractive index within the different section of the MMI to realize switching operation due to the thermo-optic (TO) effect in polymer-silica optical waveguide. Switching power analysis has been done by employing straight heater electrode followed by implementation of trapezoidal structure. The simulation result shows that the trapezoidal structure of heater electrode helps to achieve significant improvements of MMI switch performance particularly in switching power reduction by 33.37% as compared to the rectangular structure.