Hybrid Photonic Plasmonic Non-blocking Wide Spectrum WDM On-chip Router

Researchers at GW have developed a novel hybrid photonic plasmonic non-blocking wide spectrum WDM On-chip Router. The disclosed invention is highly energy efficient. For example, the design could be used as optical routers in optical networks with non-blocking routing strategy, femtojoule energy efficiency and ultra-high operating speed. Further, through integration with plasmonics, this optical router has broadband operation spectrum with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) support. The disclosed invention is also highly cost-effective. For instance, the disclosed hybrid photonic plasmonic router is capable of keeping the signal all within optical domain without the need for electrical-optical energy conversion in the optical networks. Furthermore, for large scale networks with more routing requirements, the energy consumption of the hybrid router is significantly lower than the energy consumed by electrical router. In comparison with conventional photonic routers with micro ring resonators, the hybrid router has over 5x on-chip area reduction. Moreover, the broadband operation spectrum of the hybrid router is capable of supporting multiple channels within the same routing path which significantly increase the link data rate. In terms of energy, since the hybrid router is intrinsically at off state, only half of the operating states consume energy at fJ/bit level.

The disclosed invention can be implemented as either a system, a method, or as a device as can be appreciated. The system or method or device can include various aspects as follows: (i) two bus waveguides on the same side as the input and output ports of a given switch; (ii) the island in the middle can have a silicon rib on the bottom with three more layers from the top to the bottom: gold, SiO2 and ITO . In one embodiment, the disclosed invention can cause the tunable active layer (ITO layer) to switch between the cross state and the bar state by changing the effective mode indices.

Fig. 1 – One example of the disclosed Invention

Applications:

• Optical routers in optical networks
• Plasmonics applications
  • Including in tandem with optical routers with broadband operation spectrum with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) support

Advantages:

• Energy-efficient
  • Non-blocking routing strategy
  • Femtojoule energy efficiency
  • Ultra-high operating speed
• Cost-effective