Coupled tandem cavities based electro-absorption modulator with asymmetric tandem quantum well for high modulation performance at low driving voltage

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a new electro-absorption modulator (EAM) based on coupled tandem cavities (CTC) having asymmetric tandem quantum well (ATQW) structure with separated electrode configuration to achieve large transmittance change over a broad spectral range at low driving voltage for high definition (HD) 3D imaging applications. Our theoretical calculations show that CTC with ATQW structure can provide large transmittance change over a wide spectral range at low driving voltage. By introducing separated electrode configuration, the fabricated EAM having CTC with ATQW structure shows a large transmittance change over 50%, almost three times larger spectral bandwidth compared to that of EAM having single cavity with a single thickness quantum well without significantly increasing the applied voltage. In addition, the CTC with ATQW structure also shows high speed modulation up to 28 MHz for the device having a large area of 2 mm x 0.5 mm. This high transmittance change, large spectral bandwidth and low voltage operation over a large device area for the EAM having CTC with ATQW demonstrates their huge potential as an optical image modulator for HD 3D imaging applications. (C) 2013 Optical Society of Americ