Optimal design of a high-speed polymer Mach-Zehnder interferometer electro-optic switch over 260 GHz

By using the proposed 3-D mode propagation analysis method and point-matching method, a polymer multimode interference (MMI) Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) electro-optic (EO) switch is designed and optimized for enhancing the EO modulating efficiency and matching the impedance and the velocity. The designed switch possesses low driving voltages of ±1.375 V with a short EO active region length of 5 mm under 1550 nm wavelength, and the estimated cutoff switching frequency is up to 263 GHz due to the less mismatch between the lightwave velocity and microwave velocity. The 3-dB lightwave bandwidth is 60 nm, and within the wavelength range of 1520–1580 nm, the insertion loss and crosstalk are less than 6.71 and −30 dB, respectively.