POLED OPTICAL MODULATOR

摘要

A temperature stabilised Mach-Zehnder optical modulator device (14-20) fabricated in a multi-domain substrate (12) having inverted and non-inverted domains (34, 36) separated by domain boundaries (35), wherein the electrodes (30, 31) are arranged so as to invert the biasing direction on crossing the domain boundaries which extend generally transverse to the central waveguide section (16, 18) of the optical modulator. Excess charge is thus cancelled by the multiple domains without the need to provide the usual conductive paths which are provided in the prior art to channel excess pyroelectric change away from the electrodes. This design is especially attractive for z-cut lithium niobate devices where pyroelectric effects are known to be problematic. The invention includes several other domain geometries and is applicable to a wide variety of optical and electrical devices other than modulators.