The plasmonic BTO-on-SiN platform – beyond 200 GBd modulation for optical communications

Manuel Kohli; Daniel Chelladurai; Laurenz Kulmer; Tobias Blatter; Yannik Horst; Killian Keller; Michael Doderer; Joel Winiger; David Moor; Andreas Messner; Tatiana Buriakova; Clarissa Convertino; Felix Eltes; Yuriy Fedoryshyn; Ueli Koch; Juerg Leuthold

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-02116-1

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The plasmonic BTO-on-SiN platform – beyond 200 GBd modulation for optical communications

Original Articles

- The plasmonic BTO-on-SiN platform – beyond 200 GBd modulation for optical communications
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 12, Pages: 4214-4224(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.ETH Zurich, Institute of Electromagnetic Fields, Zurich, Switzerland
  2.Ligentec SA, Ecublens, Switzerland
  3.Lumiphase AG, Stäfa, Switzerland
- Author bio：
  
  Manuel Kohli (mkohli@ethz.ch)
  Juerg Leuthold (Leuthold@ethz.ch)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-02116-1
  CLC：
- Received：14 August 2024，
  
  Revised：2025-10-14，
  
  Accepted：02 November 2025，
  
  Published Online：16 December 2025，
  
  Published：31 December 2025
- Accepted：
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Kohli, M. et al. The plasmonic BTO-on-SiN platform – beyond 200 GBd modulation for optical communications. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 4214-4224 (2025).
DOI：

Kohli, M. et al. The plasmonic BTO-on-SiN platform – beyond 200 GBd modulation for optical communications. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 4214-4224 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-02116-1.

摘要

Abstract

An integrated photonics platform that offers high-speed modulators in addition to low-loss and versatile passive components is highly sought after for different applications ranging from AI to next-generation Tbit/s links in optical fiber communication. For this purpose

we introduce the plasmonic BTO-on-SiN platform for high-speed electro-optic modulators. This platform combines the advantages provided by low-loss silicon nitride (SiN) photonics with the highly nonlinear barium titanate (BTO) as the active material. Nanoscale plasmonics enables high-speed modulators operating at electro-optical bandwidths up to 110 GHz with active lengths as short as 5 µm. Here

we demonstrate three different modulators: a 256 GBd C-band Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulator

a 224 GBd C-band IQ modulator – being both the first BTO IQ and the first IQ modulator on SiN for data communication – and finally

a 200 GBd O-band racetrack (RT) modulator. With this approach we show record data rates of 448 Gbit/s with the IQ modulator and 340 Gbit/s with the MZ modulator. Furthermore

we demonstrate the first plasmonic RT modulator with BTO and how it is ideally suited for low complexity communication in the O-band with low device loss of 2 dB. This work leverages the SiN platform and shows the potential of this technology to serve as a solution to combat the ever-increasing demand for fast modulators.

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references

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