Ultracompact Adiabatic Bi-sectional Tapered Coupler for the Si/III-V Heterogeneous Integration

Abstract: An ultracompact bi-sectional adiabatic tapered coupler, which is suitable for an adiabatic mode transformation between a common single mode SOI wire waveguide and a Si/III-V hybrid waveguide, are proposed for Si/III-V heterogeneous integration. Since the bi-sectional tapered coupler mimics a semi-3D taper and avoids exciting the unwanted high-order modes in the thick p-InP cladding layer (which is removed in the first tapered section), the length of the adiabatic mode coupler can be dramatically shortened. Taking into account the mask design and the fabrication tolerance, we design the tapered structure only in the III/V structure, while keeping the SOI wire waveguide straight. In the proposed structure, the length of the bi-sectional tapered coupler can be 9.5 {\mu}m with a large fundamental mode-coupling ratio (over 95%) in a bandwidth of ~100 nm, and provides 100 nm tolerance to misalignment, even when the BCB layer is as thick as 50 nm.