All-optical switching with 1-ps response time in a DDMEBT enabled silicon grating coupler/resonator hybrid device

An amorphous film of the third-order nonlinear optical material DDMEBT was spun onto silicon chips for the first time, filling 80 nm lithographic features. A 710 μm² device was designed, fabricated, and tested that acts both as a nonlinear resonator switch and as an input/output grating coupler to a perfectly vertical single mode fiber. Autocorrelation and spectral measurements indicate the device has <1 ps response time, 4 nm of switching bandwidth, and 4 dB of on/off contrast. With sufficient power, this all-optical device can potentially modulate a single optical carrier frequency in excess of 1 THz.