Silicon-on-insulator eight-channel optical multiplexer based on a cascade of asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers

A monolithically integrated eight-channel optical multiplexer (Mux) with a 400 GHz channel spacing ~1550 nm is presented based on a silicon-on-insulator rib waveguide and an asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer. All channels were optimized independently with integrated heaters. The fully tuned Mux shows an adjacent channel isolation of ~13 dB, an excess loss of ~2.6 dB, and a channel uniformity of ~1.5 dB over a 25 nm wavelength span. In addition, the phase tuning efficiency for different interlevel dielectric layer thicknesses and thermal crosstalk were investigated.