BENDING LOSS CHARACTERISTICS OF MQW OPTICAL WAVE-GUIDES

Optical waveguides are one of the key devices for photonic integrated circuits considered to be one of the candidates for optical interconne cts. In particular lossless bend type waveguides are necessary to inte grate different optical devices monolithically. In this paper, we repo rt on the bending loss characteristics of the multi-quantum well bend waveguide with respect to the bend radius and lateral optical mode con finement. We show that to decrease the bending loss to less than 0.5 d B, it is necessary to increase either the confinement or the bend radi us. For an example, when the confinement is around 85%, the bend radiu s should be more than 2 mm. We also show the application of the S-bend waveguides to directional coupler type optical switch.