Design of on-chip plasmonic modulator with vanadium-dioxide in hybrid orthogonal junctions on Silicon-on-Insulator

TL;DR

This paper introduces a compact plasmonic modulator using vanadium dioxide in hybrid orthogonal junctions on silicon-on-insulator, achieving high modulation depth suitable for high-frequency optical communication applications.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel design of a plasmonic modulator with a hybrid orthogonal junction structure utilizing vanadium dioxide for efficient modulation on silicon-on-insulator.

Findings

Achieved a modulation depth of 46.89 dB/μm.

Device footprint is 1.8 μm x 1 μm with a 100 nm x 100 nm modulating section.

Provided a fabrication strategy for the proposed device.

Abstract

We present a plasmonic modulator based on hybrid orthogonal silver junctions using vanadium dioxide as the modulating material on the silicon on insulator. The modulator has an ultra-compact footprint of 1.8{\mu}m x 1{\mu}m with a 100nm x 100nm modulating section based on the orthogonal geometry. We take advantage of large change in the refractive index of vanadium dioxide during its phase transition to achieve a high modulation depth of 46.89dB/{\mu}m. We also provide a fabrication strategy for the development of this device. The device geometry has potential applications in the development of next generation high frequency photonic modulators for optical communications which require a nanometer scale footprint, large modulation depth and small insertion losses.