Polarization Beam Splitter Based on Si₃N₄/SiO₂ Horizontal Slot Waveguides for On-Chip High-Power Applications

• Main Authors: Yuxi Fang, Changjing Bao, Zhonghan Wang, Yange Liu, Lin Zhang, Hao Huang, Yongxiong Ren, Zhongqi Pan, Yang Yue
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-05-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: optical waveguide; silicon photonics; silicon nitride; optical polarization
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/10/2862
• ISSN: 1424-8220

In this paper, we propose an Si₃N₄/SiO₂ horizontal-slot-waveguide-based polarization beam splitter (PBS) with low nonlinearity for on-chip high-power systems. The coupling length ratio between the quasi-TE and quasi-TM modes (<i>L</i>_TE/<i>L</i>_TM) was optimized to 2 for an efficient polarization splitting. For the single-slot design, the coupling length of the PBS was 281.5 μm, while the extinction ratios (ER) of the quasi-TM and quasi-TE modes were 23.9 dB and 20.8 dB, respectively. Compared to PBS based on the Si₃N₄ strip waveguide, the coupling length became 22.6% shorter. The proposed PBSs also had a relatively good fabrication tolerance for an ER of >20 dB. For the multi-slot design, the coupling length of the PBS was 290.3 μm, while the corresponding ER of the two polarizations were 24.0 dB and 21.0 dB, respectively. Furthermore, we investigated the tradeoff between the ER and coupling length for the optimized PBSs with single slot or multiple slots.