Abstract
Nonlinear optical dyes doped in optical polymer matrices are widely used for electro-optical devices. Linear optical properties change with dye concentration, which leads to a change in modal properties, especially in nano-structured integrated waveguides such as silicon slot-waveguides. Here, we investigate the influence of a nonlinear optical dye on the performance of a silicon-organic hybrid slot-waveguide. A simulation study of the modal and optical confinement properties is carried out and dependence of the structural parameters of the slot-waveguide and the organic cladding material is taken into account. As cladding material, a guest-host polymer system is employed comprising the nonlinear optical dye Disperse Red 1 (DR1) doped in a poly[methyl methacrylate] (PMMA) matrix. The refractive indices of doped and undoped PMMA were deduced from ellipsometric data. We present a guideline for an optimized slot-waveguide design for the fabrication in silicon-on-insulator technology giving rise to scalable, high-performance integrated electro-optical modulators.
Highlights
Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) photonics has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to its potential for high-speed modulators [1,2]
A guest-host polymer system consisting of the azo benzene dye Disperse Red 1 (DR1) in a poly[methyl methacrylate] (PMMA) matrix is employed as the electro-optical medium in this work and is called PMMA+DR1 in the following
The relative changes and absolute differences in the effective refractive index and the field confinement factor are presented for each mass concentration of the organic polymer
Summary
Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) photonics has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to its potential for high-speed modulators [1,2]. There are two EO effects present in EO polymers; namely the linear [3] and the quadratic EO effect [4] The former one has been widely investigated in SOH modulators. Data rates of up to 100 Gbit/s in on-off keying (OOK) operation and voltage-length products as low as Uπ L = 1.0 Vmm have been reported [6] The performance of those devices is achieved by the introduction of SOI slot-waveguides with polymer-clad. Low-index gap region, slot-waveguides offer a high optical field confinement [7], which can be exploited to efficiently modulate the guided mode. It was used to demonstrate the feasibility of employing the linear [9] as well as the quadaratic EO effect in SOI slot-waveguides demonstrating its high potential for SOH photonics [4]. We provide precise values for the effective refractive index and a guideline to optimize the field confinement factor
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