• Proceedings of the Optical Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2000.08a
• /
• pp.28-29
• /
• 2000

Optical power splitters and/or couplers are important components for optical signal distribution between channels both in wavelength division multiplexing(WDM) systems and photonic integrated circuits(PICs). Since polarization is usually not known after propagation in an optical fiber, passive WDM components have to be polarization insensitivity, Compared to alternatives such as directional couplers or Y-junction splitters, splitters based on multimode interference(MMI) have found a growing interest in recent yens because of their desirable characteristics, such as compact size, low excess loss, wide bandwidth, polarization independence, and relaxed fabrication tolerances$^{(1)}$ . These devices have been fabricated in polymers, silica, or III-V semiconductor materials. A1 $\times$ 4 MMI power splitter on InP materials that were suitable for application in the 1.55-${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ region$^{(2)}$ . However, the fabrication process of the structure is too complicated and the photolithography tolerance is very tight. Also, a 1 $\times$ 16 InGaAsP/InP MMI power splitter with an excess loss of 2.2dB and a splitting ratio of 1.5dB was demonstrated by using deep etching$^{(3)}$ . The deep etching of the sidewalls through the entire guide layer of the slab waveguide resulted in a number of drawbacks$^{(4)}$ . (omitted)