October 1, 2007 / Vol. 32, No.

19 / OPTICS LETTERS 2777

Electro-optically tunable microring resonators on

lithium niobate
Tzyy-Jiann Wang,* Chia-Hong Chu, and Che-Yung Lin
Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology,
No. 1, Section 3, Chung-Hsiao E. Road, Taipei 10608, Taiwan
*Corresponding author: f10939@ntut.edu.tw

Received June 20, 2007; revised August 17, 2007; accepted August 18, 2007;
posted August 22, 2007 (Doc. ID 84290); published September 18, 2007
Electro-optical tuning of a microring resonator fabricated on lithium niobate 共LiNbO3兲 is presented. The
device structure, including microring resonator and couplers, is designed in detail and is produced by tita-
nium diffusion on the wet-etched LiNbO3 ridge surface. The resonance wavelengths for TM and TE polar-
izations can be tuned by electro-optic effect. The output characteristics of through port and drop port in the
microring resonators are measured, and the effect of applied voltage on the shift of resonant wavelength is
discussed. The presented microring resonators have the features of fast tuning speed, high material stabil-
ity, bidirection wavelength shift, and no heating interference. Realization of such a microring resonator on
LiNbO3 makes the utilization of electro-optic tuning and nonlinear effects in the versatile photonic applica-
tions of microring resonators achievable. © 2007 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 130.3120, 130.3730, 060.1810.

Microring resonators have good wavelength-
dependent characteristics with compact size and are
important components in the high-density optical in-
tegrated circuit. Versatile photonic applications of
microring resonators have been realized, such as
wavelength notch filtering, add–drop multiplexing,
dispersion compensation, laser resonator, wave-
length conversion, and all-optical switching. Reso-
nant wavelength of microring resonator depends on
the round-trip length of the microring and the effec-
tive index of the guided mode. To tune the resonant
wavelength, the index of core or cladding in the
waveguide is varied by material-index trimming or
through physical effects. The former belongs to static
resonant wavelength tuning and is used to trim the
fabrication deviation for acquiring the desired reso-
nant wavelength. The static tuning methods incorpo-
rate UV radiation on SiN [1] and polymer [2] and
plasma treatment on SiN [3]. Use of physical effects
can dynamically tune the resonant wavelength and
provide a flexible reconfiguration of resonator charac-
teristics. The utilized principles and cooperated ma-
terials include the thermo-optic effect on various ma-
terials [4,5], the plasma dispersion effect on the
semiconductor by electrical carrier injection [6] or the
photoexcited carrier injection by one- [7] or two- [8]
photon absorption, the linear electro-optic effect on
polymer [9], the quadratic electro-optic effect [10],
and the reorientation of liquid crystal by electric field
[11].
Lithium niobate 共LiNbO3兲 possesses excellent
electro-optic, acousto-optic, piezoelectric, and
nonlinear-optic properties and has been used in ver-
satile photonic applications. Because of its strong
etching resistance, the waveguide structures and the
fabrication techniques that are used in other materi-
als to produce a microring resonator cannot be ap-
plied for LiNbO3. Titanium-diffused and proton-
exchanged waveguides on LiNbO3 provide
insufficient lateral optical confinement, which results
in a serious leakage of optical power in the small-
radius microring resonator. Under such a restriction,
only millimeter-radius ring resonators are produced
on LiNbO3 [12,13]. Their extremely small free-
spectral range (FSR) has seriously limited the appli-
cable range. In this Letter, a microring resonator on
LiNbO3 tunable by the electro-optic effect is pre-
sented. The device structure is designed in detail,
and its resonant wavelength can be electro-optically
tuned. The tuning characteristics of the through port
and drop port in the microring resonator are theoreti-
cally and experimentally studied.
Figure 1 shows the device structure of electro-
optically tunable microring resonator on LiNbO3. The
racetrack-shaped microring resonator utilizes two
couplers to couple the optical field in the input–
output waveguides. The microring waveguides are
produced by diffusing titanium ions on the ridge
structure formed by the wet-etching technique [14].
High index contrast produced by the ridge structure
strongly confines the optical field in the lateral direc-
tion such that the round-trip loss in the microring
Fig. 1. Device structure of the electro-optically tunable
microring resonator on LiNbO3. (Upper-left inset, photo-
graph of the completed device; upper-right inset, image of
the output intensity profile).

0146-9592/07/192777-3/$15.00 © 2007 Optical Society of America

2778 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 32, No. 19 / October 1, 2007
resonator can be reduced. To provide the required
vertical optical confinement, titanium ions are dif-
fused from the top and two lateral sides of the wet-
etched ridge structure. Figure 2(a) shows the index
distribution and the optical intensity profile of the
guided mode for the 100 ␮m radius microring wave-
guide. Index distribution caused by titanium diffu-
sion in the ridge structure is calculated by solving the
2D diffusion equation of titanium ions and using the
relation between the index increment and titanium
concentration. The intensity profile of the guided
mode in the microring waveguide is obtained by solv-
ing the vectorial wave equation in the cylindrical co-
ordinate. Because of weak optical confinement pro-
vided by titanium diffusion, propagation of the
guided mode in the small-radius microring causes
the lower side of the optical intensity profile to shift
toward the larger-radius side. Even so, high index
contrast formed by the ridge structure can still keep
most of the optical power in the waveguide. Since the
wet-etching technique has poor control over etching
width, couplers with a submicrometer etching gap,
which are extensively used in the design of microring
resonators, cannot be used on LiNbO3. In this Letter,
a titanium-diffused directional coupler with nar-
rowed waveguide width on the ridge structure is used
to couple the optical fields between the microring
resonator and the input–output waveguide. Simula-
tion results by the finite-difference beam propagation
method show that the intensity dip at the center of
the direction coupler can reduce the radiation loss
due to the field impinging on the splitting point of the
microring ridge waveguide and the straight ridge
waveguide. The electrodes are put along the micror-
ing waveguide, except for the coupler region, such
that the electro-optic tuning does not change the cou-
pling coefficient of the coupler. Figure 2(b) shows the
electrode structure in the cross-section view and the
electric field distribution in the 100 ␮m radius mi-
croring waveguide. The electric field distribution is
calculated by using the nonuniform mesh finite-
element method to solve the Laplace’s equation in cy-
lindrical coordinates. As the voltage is applied on the
electrodes, the produced electric field in the ridge
structure is principally along the z direction such
that the electro-optic coefficients r33 and r13 have the
dominant effect on tuning the resonant wavelength
for TM and TE polarizations.
Fig. 2. (a) Index distribution and optical intensity profile
for TM polarization; (b) electric field distribution in the
titanium-diffused ridge waveguide of the 100 ␮m radius
microring resonator. (The interval of index contour lines is
0.05 of the maximum index increment; the difference be-
tween two adjacent field contour lines is 1 dB.)
The electro-optically tunable microring resonators
on z-cut LiNbO3 are produced as follows: first, a
1300 Å thick tantalum film with the device pattern is
formed on the substrate and is used as a proton-
exchange mask. The width of tantalum strips in the
coupler region is 16 ␮m and that in the other regions
is 8 ␮m. In the proton-exchange process, the sub-
strate is immersed in benzoic acid at 240°C for 20 h.
After cleaning with methanol, the substrate is put in
the mixture of HF and HNO3 acids for over 6 h to
completely etch the proton-exchanged regions. The
formed ridge structure has a 5 ␮m height and a trap-
ezoid cross section due to the proton lateral diffusion
in the proton-exchange process. Then 650 Å thick ti-
tanium strips are deposited on the ridge structure.
The width of the titanium strips in the regions of the
microring and input–output waveguide is 8 ␮m,
which is the same as that of the ridge structure. The
coupler regions have two 4 ␮m width parallel tita-
nium strips with gap of 3 ␮m on the ridge structure.
Titanium-diffused waveguides are formed by diffus-
ing titanium strips at 1020°C for 10 h in the
nitrogen–oxygen mixing gas for suppressing Li out-
diffusion. Before electrode fabrication, a 3000 Å thick
silicon oxide film is deposited on the substrate sur-
face to prevent the absorption loss due to metal over-
lay on the waveguide. Then a 3000 Å thick aluminum
film with the electrode pattern is produced on the
substrate. The width of the electrode strips is 30 ␮m
and the gap between them is 8 ␮m. The photograph
of the completed device is shown in the upper left in-
set of Fig. 1. Before measurement, both ends of the
substrate are polished for optical coupling. The out-
put intensity profile is shown in the upper right inset
of Fig. 1. It has a ridge structure of inverted shape
due to image formation by the object lens.
When the voltage is applied on the electrodes, the
waveguide index can be varied through the electro-
optic effect. The modulated effective index of the
guided mode in the waveguide can be expressed as
neff = neff,0 − 共1 / 2兲n3r共V0 / G兲⌫1⌫2, where neff,0 is the ef-
fective index without applying voltage, n is the wave-
guide index (extraordinary index ne for TM, ordinary
index no for TE), r is the electro-optic coefficient, V0 is
the applied voltage, G is the gap of the coplanar elec-
trodes, ⌫1 is the overlap integral between the optical
field and the applied electric field, and ⌫2 is the re-
duction factor, which describes the dependence of the
effective index change on the index change induced
by the electro-optic effect. For TM polarization, the
electro-optic coefficient to be used is r33. For TE po-
larization, the electro-optic coefficients having an ef-
fect include (1) r13 and (2) the combination of r22 and
−r22, depending on the position of the microring. The
resonant wavelength of the microring resonator of or-
der m is given by ␭m = 共2␲R + 2L兲neff / m, where R is
the microring radius and L is the coupler length. The
FSR of the microring resonator can be expressed in
wavelength as FSR= ␭2 / 关共2␲R + 2L兲neff兴. The applied
voltage V共=−V0兲 is used here such that the positive
voltage produces the index increase. When the ap-
plied voltage is raised, the resultant increase of the

effective index causes the redshift of resonant wave-
length and the reduction of FSR. The electro-optic
tuning rate derived from the above equations is ex-
pressed as
⳵ ␭m/⳵ V = leo/共lo + leo兲共␭m/neff兲共1/2兲n3r⌫1⌫2/G,
where lo and leo are the lengths of the microring
waveguide with and without electro-optic modula-
tion. Theoretical calculation shows that the electro-
optic tuning rate for TM polarization is 2.139
⫻ 10−3 nm/ V [from Eq. (1)], when the calculated ⌫1 is
0.363, and the other parameters are leo = 488.69 ␮m,
lo + leo = 788.32 ␮m, and ⌫2 = 0.7.
To demonstrate the effect of electro-optic modula-
tion on the output characteristics of a microring reso-
nator, the output spectrums of through port and drop
port for TM polarization are measured at different
applied voltages. The results for the 100 ␮m radius
microring resonator with a coupler length of 80 ␮m
are shown in Fig. 3. As the applied voltage increases,
the increase of the effective index results in the red-
shift of a filtered-out wavelength. The same tendency
for the variation of dropped-out wavelength at the
drop port with the applied voltage is observed. The
FSRs for TM and TE polarizations are 1.42 and
1.36 nm, respectively. The larger FSR for TM polar-
ization is because the extraordinary index is smaller
than the ordinary index in LiNbO3. Figure 4 shows
the dependence of the resonant wavelength shift on
the applied voltage for TM and TE polarizations.
When the voltage is applied in the range of ±300 V,
the achievable shifts of resonance wavelength are
0.94 and 0.42 nm for TM and TE polarizations.
Larger resonant wavelength shift is possible by fur-
ther increasing the applied voltage. The relation be-
tween the resonant wavelength and the applied volt-
age has good linearity, regardless of TM or TE
polarizations. The electro-optic tuning rates for TM
and TE polarizations are 1.565⫻ 10−3 and 6.912
⫻ 10−4 nm/ V, respectively. It is noted that for TM po-
larization, the measured electro-optic tuning rate
共1.565⫻ 10−3 nm/ V兲 is rather close to the theoretical
one 共2.139⫻ 10−3 nm/ V兲. To further improve the char-
acteristics of a microring resonator, the reduction of
microring waveguide loss is important. The factors
affecting microring waveguide loss include (1) bend
loss due to the power leakage toward the outer-lower
side, (2) side wall scattering loss caused by tiny holes
produced in the wet-etching process, (3) the modal
mismatch loss at the junction between curve and
Fig. 3. Tuning characteristics of (a) through port; and (b)
drop port; for TM polarization in the 100 ␮m radius micror-
ing resonator.
October 1, 2007 / Vol. 32, No. 19 / OPTICS LETTERS 2779
共1兲
Fig. 4. Dependence of resonant wavelength shift for TM
and TE polarizations on the applied voltage in the 100 ␮m
radius microring resonator.
straight waveguides, (4) the insertion loss of the di-
rectional coupler, and (5) partial absorption of the
metal electrode.
In conclusion, an electro-optically tunable micro-
ring resonator on LiNbO3 is demonstrated. A
micrometer-radius microring resonator on LiNbO3 is
realized by the detailed design of the device structure
and the wet-etching process. The tuning characteris-
tics of through port and drop port by electro-optic ef-
fect are measured and have tuning rates of 1.565
⫻ 10−3 and 6.912⫻ 10−4 nm/ V, respectively for TM
and TE polarizations. The electro-optically tunable
microring resonator on LiNbO3 has the advantages of
fast tuning speed, high tuning accuracy, bi-direction
wavelength shift, high material stability, and no
heating interference to the neighboring devices.
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