Ultra-Compact Amorphous Silicon Waveguide for Wavelength Conversion

In this letter, we demonstrate, for the first time, successful four wave mixing (FWM)-based wavelength conversion of binary phase shift keyed (BPSK) and quadrature phase shift keyed (QPSK) signals, at 20-Gb/s bitrate, in a 1-mm long amorphous silicon waveguide. A maximum FWM-efficiency of -26 dB was achieved by employing a pump power of just 70 mW, establishing this technology as a contender for the development of ultra-compact, low power, silicon photonics wavelength converter. Bit error ratio measurements demonstrated successful conversion with less than 1 dB penalty level, for both BPSK and QPSK signals (at BER = 10
^-5
).