Nonlinear-optical phase modification in dispersion-engineered Si photonic wires.

The strong dispersion and large third-order nonlinearity in Si photonic wires are intimately linked in the optical physics needed for the optical control of phase. By carefully choosing the waveguide dimensions, both linear and nonlinear optical properties of Si wires can be engineered. In this paper we provide a review of the control of phase using nonlinear-optical effects such as self-phase and cross-phase modulation in dispersion-engineered Si wires.

Measurement of carrier mobility in silicon nanowires.

We report the first direct capacitance measurements of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) and the consequent determination of field carrier mobilities in undoped-channel SiNW field-effect transistors (FETs) at room temperature. We employ a two-FET method for accurate extraction of the intrinsic channel resistance and intrinsic channel capacitance of the SiNWs. The devices used in this study were fabricated using a top-down method to create SiNW FETs with up to 1000 wires in parallel for increasing the raw capacitance while maintaining excellent control on device dimensions and series resistance.

Optical modulation using anti-crossing between paired amplitude and phase resonators.

An optical modulator design based upon anti-crossing between coupled silicon microrings with independent amplitude and phase functionality is presented. The device exhibits over 25x improvement in sensitivity to an input drive signal when compared with previously studied microring modulators based on control of waveguide-resonator coupling. The new design also demonstrates an ON-OFF contrast of 14 dB, and has an ultra-compact footprint of 0.