Novel Ge waveguide platform on Ge-on-insulator wafer for mid-infrared photonic integrated circuits

We present Ge rib waveguide devices fabricated on a Ge-on-insulator (GeOI) wafer as a proof-of-concept Ge mid-infrared photonics platform. Numerical analysis revealed that the driving current for a given optical attenuation in a carrier-injection Ge waveguide device at a 1.95 μm wavelength can be approximately five times smaller than that in a Si device, enabling in-line carrier-injection Ge optical modulators based on free-carrier absorption. We prepared a GeOI wafer with a 2-μm-thick buried oxide layer (BOX) by wafer bonding. By using the GeOI wafer, we fabricated Ge rib waveguides. The Ge rib waveguides were transparent to 2 μm wavelengths and the propagation loss was found to be 1.4 dB/mm, which may have been caused by sidewall scattering. We achieved a negligible bend loss in the Ge rib waveguide, even with a 5 μm bend radius, owing to the strong optical confinement in the GeOI structure. We also formed a lateral p-i-n junction along the Ge rib waveguide to explore the capability of absorption modulation by carrier injection. By injecting current through the lateral p-i-n junction, we achieved optical intensity modulation in the 2 μm band based on the free-carrier absorption in Ge.