Design and Analysis of a Compact SOI-Based Aluminum/Highly Doped p-Type Silicon Hybrid Plasmonic Modulator

作者：Qi, Zhipeng; Hu, Guohua^*; Li, Lei; Yun, Binfeng; Zhang, Ruohu; Cui, Yiping^*

来源：IEEE Photonics Journal, 2016, 8(3): 4801711.

DOI：10.1109/JPHOT.2016.2559439

• Plasmonics
• silicon nanophotonics
• waveguide devices
• modulators

A silicon-based n-p-n-type hybrid plasmonic modulator operating at telecom wavelength of 1550 nm is theoretically investigated in this paper. The proposed modulator is dependent on the integration of a 1-mu m-long n-p-n-type Al/p-Si hybrid plasmonic waveguide with Si waveguides. It is demonstrated that when the p-type silicon is highly doped, it shows metal-like properties which can support the propagation of surface plasmon polariton waves. The simulation results show that the output power of TE (TM) mode decreases from -7.6 dB (-2.5 dB) to -31.5 dB (-7.5 dB) when the Al stack is 0.2 mu m high and the carrier concentration in p-Si is set to be 1 x 10(21) cm(-3), which is achieved with a voltage increase from 0 to 1.2 V. Such a plasmonic modulator not only depends on the propagation loss due to electroabsorption effect but takes advantage of the coupling loss raised by modal mismatch as well, which leads to a high modulation efficiency.

• 出版日期2016-6
• 单位东南大学