Dual-facet coupling of SOA array on 4-μm silicon-on-insulator implementing a hybrid integrated SOA-MZI wavelength converter

Hybrid integration on Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) has emerged as a practical solution for compact and high-performance Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs). It aims at combining the cost-effectiveness and CMOS-compatibility benefits of the low-loss SOI waveguide platform with the versatile active optical functions that can be realized by III-V photonic materials. The utilization of SOI, as an integration board, with μm-scale dimensions allows for an excellent optical mode matching between silicon rib waveguides and active chips, allowing for minimal-loss coupling of the pre-fabricated IIIV components. While dual-facet coupling as well as III-V multi-element array bonding should be employed to enable enhanced active on-chip functions, so far only single side SOA bonding has been reported. In the present communication, we present a novel integration scheme that flip-chip bonds a 6-SOA array on 4-μm thick SOI technology by coupling both lateral SOA facets to the waveguides, and report on the experimental results of wavelength conversion operation of a dual-element Semiconductor Optical Amplifier – Mach Zehnder Interferometer (SOA-MZI) circuit. Thermocompression bonding was applied to integrate the pre-fabricated SOAs on SOI, with vertical and horizontal alignment performed successfully at both SOA facets. The demonstrated device has a footprint of 8.2mm x 0.3mm and experimental evaluation revealed a 12Gb/s wavelength conversion operation capability with only 0.8dB power penalty for the first SOA-MZI-on-SOI circuit and a 10Gb/s wavelength conversion operation capability with 2 dB power penalty for the second SOA-MZI circuit. Our experiments show how dual facet integration can significantly increase the level of optical functionalities achievable by flip-chip hybrid technology and pave the way for more advanced and more densely PICs.