The Effect of Metal Thickness on Si Wire to Plasmonic Slot Waveguide Mode Conversion

We investigate mode converters for Si wire to plasmonic slot waveguides at 1550 nm telecom wavelength. The structures are based on a taper geometry. We provide optimal dimensions with more than 90% power transmission for a range of metal (Au) thicknesses between 30-250 nm. We provide details on how to differentiate between the total power and the power in the main mode of the plasmonic slot waveguide. Our analysis is based on the orthogonality of modes of the slot waveguide subject to a suitable inner product definition. Our results are relevant for lowering the insertion loss and the bit error rate of plasmonic modulators.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, preprint version of the published paper, includes only the English abstrac

Towards an efficient simulation framework for plasmonic organic hybrid E/O modulators

Due to the large computational resources required, with CPU times of the order of several days, full-wave optical simulators can be hardly exploited for the modeling and optimization of plasmonic organic hybrid electro/optic modulators. With the aim to drastically reduce such complexity, in this work we present a divide-et-impera strategy reducing the number of FDTD simulations required to perform a full-wave simulation of the modulation response. This framework is demonstrated on 2D simulations of a device inspired by the literature, tracing a viable roadmap towards a computationally sustainable, yet accurate, comprehensive 3D simulation framework

Efficient modeling of plasmonic organic hybrid electro/optic modulators

The work focuses on the modeling and simulation of plasmonic organic hybrid electro/optic modulators. Preliminary multiphysics-augmented simulations of the slot plasmonic waveguide phase modulator are presented. Instead of applying them to system-level models, they are combined with the results of 3D finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations to achieve realistic physics-based simulations at moderate computational costs. The model is demonstrated on a Mach-Zehnder plasmonic modulator inspired to literature results and validated through a comparison with 3D-FDTD simulations of the entire device

Plasmonic-organic hybrid electro/optic Mach-Zehnder modulators: from waveguide to multiphysics modal-FDTD modeling

Plasmonic organic hybrid electro/optic modulators are among the most innovative light modulators fully compatible with the silicon photonics platform. In this context, modeling is instrumental to both computer-aided optimization and interpretation of experimental data. Due to the large computational resources required, modeling is usually limited to waveguide simulations. The first aim of this work to investigate an improved, physics-based description of the voltage-dependent electro/optic effect, leading to a multiphysics-augmented model of the modulator cross-section. Targeting the accuracy of full-wave, 3D modeling with moderate computational resources, the paper presents a novel mixed modal-FDTD simulation strategy that allows us to drastically reduce the number and complexity of 3D-FDTD simulations needed to accurately evaluate the modulator response. This framework is demonstrated on a device inspired by the literature

High speed plasmonic modulator array enabling dense optical interconnect solutions

Plasmonic modulators might pave the way for a new generation of compact low-power high-speed optoelectronic devices. We introduce an extremely compact transmitter based on plasmonic Mach-Zehnder modulators offering a capacity of 4 × 36 Gbit/s on a footprint that is only limited by the size of the high-speed contact pads. The transmitter array is contacted through a multicore fiber with a channel spacing of 50 μm

Multiphysics modelling of high-speed optoelectronic devices for silicon photonics platforms

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