Microdisk resonator assisted all-optical switching with improved speed using a reverse-biased p-n diode

We present a compact and power efficient all-optical switching using a silicon microdisk resonator integrated with a p-n junction. We study the dependence of free-carrier lifetime, one of the most critical parameters to determine the switching speed, on reverse bias, optical intensity, and p-n junction position and dimension. Our experiments reveal that the carrier lifetime decreases with the increasing reverse bias, consistent with the theoretical results. The all-optical switching of a 211-1 non-return-to-zero pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS) signal at a data rate of 10 Gbits/s is demonstrated with p-n junction reversely biased at −15 V and the pump power being 5.96 dBm.