Systematic investigation of silicon digital 1×2 electro-optic switch based on a microdisk resonator through carrier injection

We perform a systematic investigation on the silicon digital 1×2 electro-optic switch based on a microdisk resonator with the refractive index tuned by carrier injection and extraction. Analytical expressions are proposed to quantify the crosstalk, insertion loss and switching time, and then they are used to analyze the effect of the coupling-in/out coefficient, internal loss, and quality factor. Both electron beam lithography and photolithography were employed to construct the asymmetrically coupled microdisk resonator integrated with a p-i-n diode. A high-performance switch has been demonstrated with a crosstalk of less than −20 dB, a switching time of ∼2 ns, as well as a power consumption of 0.46 mW. Moreover, the switching of optical signals with high data rates has been characterized and analyzed under different working conditions.