Efficient CW Four-Wave Mixing in Silicon-on-Insulator Micro-Rings With Active Carrier Removal

Silicon-on-insulator rib waveguides with passive loss of -0.74 dB/cm and free-carrier lifetime reduction via reverse biased p-i-n diodes are used to show efficient continuous wave four-wave mixing with 2 × reduction in required pump power for comparably high conversion efficiency of -8.2 dB, similar to best reports. A conversion efficiency of -13.4 dB is also subsequently achieved using 20 μm radius micro-ring resonators at significantly reduced pump power.