A CMOS-Compatible Carrier-Injection Plasmonic Micro-Ring Modulator (CIPMRM) with Stable Performance as Temperature Varying around 60 K

A CMOS-compatible carrier-injection plasmonic micro-ring modulator (CIPMRM) is proposed and theoretically analyzed. It has a compacted footprint of 43.4 μm2 (R = 2 μm), a data rate of 45 Gbps, an insertion loss of −8 dB, a static extinction ratio of 22 dB, and an energy consumption of 4.5 pJ/bit when 2.5 V peak-to-peak voltage is applied. Moreover, it works well when temperature varies around 60 K. A method of tuning the resonant wavelength based on the carrier concentration is proposed here because the device is reliable when the linewidth varies within ±5%. CIPMRM provides a way to overcome the shortcomings of temperature and process sensitivity, which are characteristics of the photonic micro-ring modulator. It can be used in optoelectronic integration for its small size and stable performance.