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Updated: May 22, 2026

Patterning via Optical Saturable Transitions - Fabrication and Characterization
Published on: December 11, 2014
Enhanced optical bistability from self-heating due to free carrier absorption in substrate removed silicon ring
Xuezhe Zheng1, Ying Luo, Guoliang Li
1Oracle Labs, 9515 Towne Centre Drive, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. xuezhe.zheng@oracle.com
Abstract:
We show enhanced optical bistability induced by free carrier absorption from junction doping in substrate-removed silicon ring modulators. Such linear thermal effects dominate the loss in high-speed depletion silicon ring modulators. Optical bistability was observed with about 100 μW of input optical power. We further show that such thermal interactions causes data-dependent ring resonance shifts, and consequently severely degrade the data modulation quality at low speeds. The frequency response of this effect was measured to be about 100~200 kHz.
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