Electroabsorption modulators (EAM) have attract a lot of interests in high-speed optical communication due to low chirp, high-efficiency operation and the capability to be integrated with other semiconductor devices. Enhancing the operation by overcoming the trade-off between RC-limitation and high-speed performance, traveling-wave types of EAMs (TWEAM) have been documented to be a good candidate. In this thesis, a novel type of TWEAMs, namely undercut-etching-the-active-region type (UEAR), have been characterized and analyzed. There are two topics in this thesis, namely (1) one is to compare the performance of the UEAR and conventional ridge-waveguide (RW) types of TWEAM. The regime of D.C. to 40GHz small-signal modulation and 10 Gbits/sec large-signal data transmission are used to characterize and compare the performance of TWEAMs. In comparison with conventional ridge-waveguide (RW) TWEAM, 3dB lower optical-insertion-loss, at least 6dB higher in RF-link (D.C. to 40GHz) and faster electro-optical response (3dB bandwidth of 25GHz at 50£[-termination for UEAW and 15GHz for RW) are obtained in UEAW-TWEAM. Error-free 10Gbits/sec operation with high sensitivity of ¡V36.2 dBm and low swing voltage of 0.6V have been achieved in UEAW-TWEAM, a 3.2dB enhancement over RW-TWEAM, indicating the trade-off in designing electroabsorption modulators can be greatly released by novel type structure (UEAW). (2) The other topic is the application of TWEAM to all-optical wavelength converters. The generating photocurrent by optical absorption is the effect accompanying with the electrical-to-optical modulation in the EAM. Using the properties of cross-absorption and generating photocurrent, high-speed all-optical modulation can be potentially implemented in the application of EAMs. Long -waveguide high-speed TWEAMs can thus have high-extinction ratio performance in all-optical conversion. The conversion efficiency of -26dB and high extinction ration of >20dB are obtained in this experiment, showing the potential in the application of all-optical conversion.

All-optical wavelength conversion will be one of the most key technologies in all-optical network. Wavelngth converter using nonlinear effect can resolve wavelength contentions with its high transparency and subcarrier-multiplexed channels in a complex all-optical network model which is more beneficial than O/E/O method. Periodically poled LiNbO3 crystal fiber for wavelength conversion is successfully grown by LHPG method with high-electric-field bias. It does not require conducting the metallic electrode to define domain period. The pitch depends on the frequency of applied external electric field and the growth speed. Domain period of 18.9 £gm for C-band wavelength converter and domain period of 15.45 £gm for tunable blue/green laser are demonstrated in this thesis. Micro-swing during growth is managed to assist poling process. More than 40 nm wavelength range of blue/green laser was generated and 10% internal SHG conversion efficiency was achieved. A simulation shows that maximum tuning range using a graded-period qusai-phase-matching structure can be as large as 33 nm. With the improvement of uniformity, broadband design for cascaded processes, and waveguide structure, superior performance of periodically poled LiNbO3 crystal fiber can be achieved.

In present dissertation, field-driven quantum well (QW) device is proposed to obtain high-speed and high-efficiency all-optical wavelength converter (AOWC). A new type QW material, InGaAsP/InGaAlAs, is employed to improve not only quantum confined Stark effect, but also carrier life time during high electric field excitation. The bandwidth as well as efficiency can be enhanced. Thus, the slow gain recovery mechanism (~100ps) from conventional semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)-based AOWC can be overcome. The dispersion- and efficient- limited fiber-based AOWC (~10ps) can also be avoided. -3dB frequency bandwidth exceeding 40GHz for both electrical-to-optical and photocurrent response has been observed from InGaAsP/InGaAlAs waveguide of AOWC, leading to above 40GHz bandwidth in optical-to-optical response. A 40 Gb/s measurement setup is finally used for testing eye-diagram and bit-error-ratio in order to verify the data transmission of AOWC. Low power penalty with 0.5 dB comparing with back-to-back system performance is measured, suggesting InGaAsP /InGaAlAs waveguide is applicable to all-optical processing. By exciting short optical pump pulse in such waveguide, as short as 6.4ps probe pulse is observed, breaking through 10ps order in conventional type of QW and thus indicating the plausibility of performing 100Gb/s all optical processing.

¡@¡@We integrated the laser-heated pedestal growth (LHPG) system with accurately controlled electrodes to build up our in situ poling system. The ZnO and MgO doped periodically poled lithium niobate crystal fiber were fabricated with the poling system. This poling system has the advantage of convenience and fast growth, but the ¡§screen effect¡¨ caused by free charges which exist near the molten zone must be eliminated. The micro swing resulted from the electric force is a feasible solution, because it can disarrange the free charges and reduce the ¡§screen effect¡¨. However, without excellently controlled micro swing, the uniformity of the poled domain pitch will loose and the conversion efficiency can not be improved. After analysis of the measured current data, the approximate system current model was presented and the proportional dependence between system current and micro swing was verified. Thus the system current was applied as the micro swing feedback signal, with that the variation of the micro swing was reduced from 25% to 15%. The stability of CO2 laser power is also a dominant factor to determine the quality of poled crystal fiber. The variation of the CO2 laser power was controlled within 1%. All the complicated works and precise control during the crystal fiber growth were accomplished with the LabVIEW program. ¡@¡@A novel and simple self-cascaded SHG + SFG scheme is presented for the generation of tunable blue/green light using ZnO doped periodically poled lithium niobate crystal fiber (PPLNCF) with a single designed pitch. A PPLNCF with a uniform period of 15.45£gm, the maximum conversion efficiency for the second harmonic generation and the cascaded SHG + SFG blue light can reach up to -9.2 dB and -31.9 dB, respectively. The 3 dB bandwidth of the tunable blue light is 3 nm (475-478 nm). In order to expand the tuning bandwidth range, a QPM gradient periodical structure was designed and can provide a 3 dB bandwidth of 65 nm for the tunable blue/green light output by simulation. We have successfully grown a crystal fiber with the domain pitch of 18.9 £gm for the C-band wavelength converter. The crystal length is 1.8 mm, the effective nonlinear coefficient of the lithium niobate crystal fiber is 18.2 pm/V that equals 0.53¡Ñdideal (34.4 pm/V). The conversion efficiency for converting the CW laser in C-band is about -59.3 dB.