Monolithically integrated 64-channel silicon hybrid demultiplexer enabling simultaneous wavelength- and mode-division-multiplexing

A compact 64‐channel hybrid demultiplexer based on silicon‐on‐insulator nanowires is proposed and demonstrated experimentally to enable wavelength‐division‐multiplexing and mode‐division‐multiplexing simultaneously in order to realize an ultra‐large capacity on‐chip optical‐interconnect link. The present hybrid demultiplexer consists of a 4‐channel mode multiplexer constructed with cascaded asymmetrical directional‐couplers and two bi‐directional 17 × 17 arrayed‐waveguide gratings (AWGs) with 16 channels. Here each bi‐directional AWG is equivalent as two identical 1 × 16 AWGs. The measured excess loss and the crosstalk for the monolithically integrated 64‐channel hybrid demultiplexer are about ‐5 dB and ‐14 dB, respectively. Better performance can be achieved by minimizing the imperfections (particularly in AWGs) during the fabrication processes. A monolithically integrated 64‐channel hybrid demultiplexer is realized with a 4‐channel mode multiplexer and two bi‐directional 17 × 17 arrayed‐waveguide gratings (AWGs) to enable wavelength‐division‐multiplexing and mode‐division‐multiplexing simultaneously.