Wide-aperture GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well electro-optic modulators

• We present design and fabrication methods for surface normal monolithic amplitude modulators with an aperture up to 14 × 14 mm2, a contrast ratio of 6:1 and for low driving voltages (=8 V). The modulators consist of undoped GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells embedded in a Fabry-Perot (FP) resonance cavity grown by MOVPE. To improve the device performance the FP cavity, the period and thickness of the quantum well and doping concentration were optimised. Also, the dimension of the modulator were varied from 0.5 × 0.5 to 14 × 14 mm2. The results show that the yield of the modulators increases significantly when decreasing the size of the modulators. To remedy the low yield issue for wide aperture modulator, a pixelated approach was used to divide the mono pixel in a monolithic modulator into several pixels, for example from 4 to 48. The modulation speed of the modulators with different dimensions was characterised by electro-optic (EO) response measurements. The temporal optical response of the large modulators was satisfactory up to the order of MHz modulation frequency where the RC constant limited the performance. A few of the modulators with wide apertures are to be assembled into an optical link system for free-space communication.

Nyckelord

Electro-optic modulator

Free-space optical communication

GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells

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