Rectangular-cladding silicon slot waveguide with improved nonlinear performance

摘要

Silicon slot waveguides have great potential in hybrid silicon integration to realize nonlinear optical applications. We propose a rectangular-cladding hybrid silicon slot waveguide. Simulation result shows that, with a rectangular-cladding, the slot waveguide can be formed by narrower silicon strips, so the two-photon absorption (TPA) loss in silicon is decreased. When the cladding material is a nonlinear polymer, the calculated TPA figure of merit (FOM_(TPA)) is 4.4, close to the value of bulk nonlinear polymer of 5.0. This value confirms the good nonlinear performance of rectangular-cladding silicon slot waveguides.