Magneto-optical (MO) switches operate with a dynamically applied magnetic field. The MO devices presented in this paper consist of microring resonators (MRRs) fabricated on amorphous silicon-on-garnet platform. Two types of MO switches with MRRs were developed. In the first type, the switching state is controlled by an external magnetic field component included in the device. By combination of MO and thermo-optic effects, wavelength tunable operation is possible without any additional heater, and broadband switching is achievable. The other type of switch is a self-holding optical switch integrated with an FeCoB thin-film magnet. The switching state is driven by the remanence of the integrated thin-film magnet, and the state is maintained without any power supply.

We proposed and theoretically discussed a polarization switch based on a multiple quantum well (MQW) microring resonator (MRR) with an L-shaped waveguide as a dynamic polarization control device. The L-shaped waveguide was useful to obtain the rotation angle of the principal axis of 45° even when the core layer has form birefringence such as an MQW. The MRR functions as both a polarization converter and a wavelength filter. As an MQW core layer, a multiple five-layer asymmetric coupled quantum well (FACQW) was assumed. Polarization switching of an inputted light with a selected wavelength was successfully demonstrated at an operation voltage as low as 0.2 V using the electrorefractive index change in the MRR waveguide. The maximum polarization extinction ratio was more than 35 dB. The high-speed and low-voltage polarization switching can be realized with the proposed MRR polarization switch.

A new design method for a high-order series-coupled microring filter using Chebyshev filter condition was proposed and its application to the design of a wavelength-selective switch (WSS) was discussed. In the proposed method, the propagation loss in a microring resonator, coupling loss at a coupler, and a free spectral ranges (FSR) in a microring resonator are considered for the first time. It was found that for high-order series coupled microring resonators, the WSS designed using Chebyshev condition has more boxlike filter responses and high extinction ratio, compared with that designed using Butterworth condition, in the case where the round-trip loss in a microring is relatively large. In addition, the fourth-order series-coupled microring WSS with boxlike responses was successfully designed, considering Vernier effect for a larger FSR and shift in resonant wavelength.

A novel and compact electro-optic modulator implemented by a combination of a 12 multimode interference (MMI) coupler and an integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) modulator consisting of a microring and a phase modulator (PM) is presented and analyzed theoretically. It is shown that the proposed modulator offers both ultra-linearity and high output RF gain simultaneously, with no requirements for complicated and precise direct current (DC) control.

In this review paper we showcase recent activities on silicon photonics science and technology research in Hong Kong regarding two important topical areas--microresonator devices and optical nonlinearities. Our work on silicon microresonator filters, switches and modulators have shown promise for the nascent development of on-chip optoelectronic signal processing systems, while our studies on optical nonlinearities have contributed to basic understanding of silicon-based optically-pumped light sources and helium-implanted detectors. Here, we review our various passive and electro-optic active microresonator devices including (i) cascaded microring resonator cross-connect filters, (ii) NRZ-to-PRZ data format converters using a microring resonator notch filter, (iii) GHz-speed carrier-injection-based microring resonator modulators and 0.5-GHz-speed carrier-injection-based microdisk resonator modulators, and (iv) electrically reconfigurable microring resonator add-drop filters and electro-optic logic switches using interferometric resonance control. On the nonlinear waveguide front, we review the main nonlinear optical effects in silicon, and show that even at fairly modest average powers two-photon absorption and the accompanied free-carrier linear absorption could lead to optical limiting and a dramatic reduction in the effective lengths of nonlinear devices.

We propose and demonstrate a simple one-bus two-ring configuration where the two rings are mutually coupled that has advantages over the one-ring structure. Unlike a one cavity system, it can exhibit near critically-coupled transmission with a broader range of loss. It can also significantly enhance the cavity finesse by simply making the second ring twice the size of the bus-coupled one, with the enhancement proportional to the intensity buildup in the second ring.

We have numerically evaluated the filtering characteristics of two vertically coupled microring resonator filters. In this evaluation we used the finite-difference time-domain method as the numerical analysis method. The structure we designed allows only a specific wavelength to pass. The filtering characteristics of this structure can be altered by changing the layout of the microring resonator. By using this structure the interval between peak wavelengths at a specific wavelength in the output spectrum can be increased. Specifically, the interval between peak wavelengths can be increased from 20 nm to 40 nm at wavelengths near 1.46 µm.

Utilizing the small bending radius of high index contrast optical waveguides, ultra-compact optical devices such as waveguide branch, Mach-Zehnder interferometer, arrayed waveguide grating filter, microring resonator filter, and so on can be realized. We have proposed and demonstrated a vertically coupled microring resonator as an Add/Drop filter, and recently realized a hitless wavelength channel selective switch (hitless tunable Add/Drop filter) using Thermo-Optic (TO) effect of double series coupled dielectric microring resonator. Using a high-index dielectric material as the core, the response time was reduced to 105 µs (rise time) and 15 µs (fall time), which are fifteen-fold and hundred-fold faster than that of polymer material, and the reproducibility by the heat cycle test was also improved to less than 0.01 nm. The tuning range of wavelength selective switch was expanded to 13.3 nm using the Vernier effect, and a large extinction ratio of more than 20 dB was realized. In this review, the principle and recent progress of microring resonator based wavelength selective switch will be introduced and some basic switching circuits required to optical cross connect will be discussed.

We demonstrated a vertically coupled microring resonator (VCMRR) filter as an Add/Drop wavelength filter. However, the accuracy of center wavelength was not sufficiently high for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems. Thus, a UV trimming technique using a SiN (n=2.01 at λ=1.55 µm) ring core was previously developed. Although a wide center wavelength trimming range of -12.1 nm and the long-term stability of center wavelength were realized, the core size required for single-mode propagation was too small for fabrication using a photolithography process. Therefore in this study, we introduced SiON as the microring core to relax the single-mode condition of core size. We discovered a large UV sensitivity of SiON film formed by a PECVD method, and a wide range UV trimming of microring resonator of -10.5 nm was demonstrated using this phenomenon.