Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 15, 2025
Fabrication of Zero Mode Waveguides for High Concentration Single Molecule Microscopy
Published on: May 12, 2020
Silicon Nanowire-Assisted High Uniform Arrayed Waveguide Grating
Shuo Yuan1, Jijun Feng1, Zhiheng Yu1
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Modern Optical System, Engineering Research Center of Optical Instrument and System, Ministry of Education, School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China.
Abstract:
Determining how to improve the non-uniformity of arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) is of great significance for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems. In this work, a silicon nanowire-assisted AWG structure is proposed, which can achieve high uniformity with a low insertion loss. The article compares the effect of nanowire number and shape on uniformity and insertion loss, finding that double nanowires provide the best performance. Double nanowires with a width of 230 nm and length of 3.5 μm can consist of a slot configuration between arrayed waveguides, both connecting to the star coupler and spacing 165 nm from the waveguides. Compared with conventional 8- and 16-channel AWGs with channel spacing of 200 GHz, the non-uniformity of the presented structure can be improved from 1.09 and 1.6 dB to 0.24 and 0.63 dB, respectively. The overall footprint of the device would remain identical, which is 276 × 299 or 258 × 303 μm2 for the 8- or 16-channel AWG. The present high uniformity design is simple and easy to fabricate without any additional insertion loss, which is expected to be widely applied in the highly integrated DWDM systems.
