깊이 식각된 다중모드 간섭 영역으로 구성된 광전력 분배기 및 결합기의 설계

Design of optical power splitters and couplers composed of deeply etched multimode interference section

The optical power splitter/couplers based on MMI(multimode interference) in GaAs/AlGaAs are studied. We presetn a design of optical power splitter/couplers, which have deeply etched multimode waveguide. The properties and fabrication tolerance on the etching depth, multimode waveguide width are simulatedusing a FD-BPM (finite difference beam propgation method). Proposed 1*N optical of designed device is 0.7dB smaller than the optical power splitter with a shallowly etched MMI section. For 0.5dB excess loss, the predicted fabrication tolerance is 0.6.mu.m on the multimode waveguide width of the 14 optical power splitter with a deeply etched MMI section. Also excess loss and uniformity of poposed 32*32 optical power coupler are below 0.3dB. The excess loss of proposed 32*32 optical power coupler is 2dB smaller than the optical power coupler with a shallowly etched MMI section. It is shown that the optical power splitters/couplers with a deeply etched mMI section have low loss, good uniformity, and improved fabriction tolerance.