Ultracompact and Low-Power Plasmonic MZI Switch Using Cyclomer Loading

We present a 2 × 2 hybrid silicon-plasmonic thermooptic (TO) asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometric (MZI) switch having only 40-μm long active cyclomer-loaded plasmonic phase arms. It requires less than 12 mW of power and has 2/5-μs ON/OFF-times, respectively, a modulation depth higher than 90% and a 13.2-dB extinction ratio. Data traffic evaluation has been carried out using 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero streams, yielding error-free operation at both switching states with power penalties ranging between 1 to 4.8 dB. The use of the cyclomer loading having a higher TO coefficient than polymethyl methacrylate has resulted to the smallest footprint among plasmonic MZI TO switches reported so far.