High Cost Performance Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Material for Electro-optic Devices

We report a low-cost electro-optic (EO) sol-gel material with large EO coefficient and excellent poling stability for EO devices. Disperse red 1 (DR1) chromophore is doped in the three-dimensional silicon dioxide/titanium dioxide network possessing a high γ33 (88 pm/V at 1300nm wavelength and 71 pm/V at 1550 nm wavelength). Favourable poled stability (less than 5% relaxed after 2500 hours at 80°C) and low absorption are demonstrated. Strip-loaded waveguide Mach–Zehnder (M-Z) modulators are implemented based on this synthesized EO material, showing 7 V half-wave voltage and less than 9 dB insertion loss at 1550 nm wavelength.