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Proton radiation effects on high-speed silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators for space application

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Abstract

In this paper, performance degradation effects on high-speed silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators under proton radiation were investigated for future space environment applications. The test devices were exposed to 3-MeV protons of three fluence levels (5 × 1013, 2 × 1014, and 5 × 1015 ions/cm2), which is comparable to the radiation amount for operating in a harsh space environment after several decades. The performance of the silicon modulator after radiation was characterized in terms of modulation efficiency and eye diagram. The results illustrate that the modulation efficiency is significantly reduced after proton radiation and shows an obvious decrease with increasing radiation fluence. The extinction ratios of the on-off keying (OOK) eye diagram are obviously dropped with increasing radiation fluence and correspond well to modulation efficiency degradation. Furthermore, three representative states for data transmission are demonstrated under three fluences, from still working to the critical state and eventually complete fail. Displacement damage and ionization damage are the two major mechanisms during proton radiation, which lead to the bulk defects and accumulating defect charges and cause performance degradation of silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2021YFB2800400), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62001010, 11975034, 11921006, U20B2025), and Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. Z210004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, School of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Changhao Han, Yuansheng Tao, Jun Qin & Xingjun Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zhaoyi Hu & Engang Fu

  3. Institute of Microelectronics, School of Integrated Circuits, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Yandong He

  4. Peking University Yangtze Delta Institute of Optoelectronics, Nantong, 226010, China

    Fenghe Yang & Xingjun Wang

  5. Frontier Science Center for Nano-optoelectronics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Xingjun Wang

  6. Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Xingjun Wang

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  1. Changhao Han
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  2. Zhaoyi Hu
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Correspondence to Xingjun Wang.

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Han, C., Hu, Z., Tao, Y. et al. Proton radiation effects on high-speed silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators for space application. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 65, 222401 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-022-3556-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-022-3556-0

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