SiC pinpin photonic filters for linking the visible spectrum to the telecom gap

• SiC wavelength selector, under optical bias, acts as reconfigurable active filters.
• The selector filter uses an optical biased pin/pin a-SiC:H photodetector.
• The device becomes reconfigurable acting either as data selector or data router.
• The index is a 4-bit binary RGBV or VBGR code under front or back irradiation.
• An algorithm to decode the transmitted information is presented.

Expanding far beyond traditional applications at telecommunications wavelengths, the SiC photonic devices has recently proven its merits for working with visible range optical signals. Reconfigurable wavelength selectors are essential sub-systems for implementing reconfigurable WDM networks and optical signal processing. Visible range to telecom band spectral translation in SiC/Si can be accomplished using wavelength selector under appropriated optical bias, acting as reconfigurable active filters. In this paper we present a monolithically integrated wavelength selector based on a multilayer SiC/Si integrated optical filters that requires optical switches to select wavelengths. The selector filter is realized by using double pin/pin a-SiC:H photodetector with front and back biased optical gating elements. Red, green, blue and violet communication channels are transmitted together, each one with a specific bit sequence. The combined optical signal is analyzed by reading out the generated photocurrent, under different background wavelengths applied either from the front or the back side. The backgrounds acts as channel selectors that selects one or more channels by splitting portions of the input multi-channel optical signals across the front and back photodiodes. The transfer characteristics effects due to changes in steady state light, irradiation side and frequency are presented. The relationship between the optical inputs and the digital output levels is established.

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