Silicon-organic hybrid thermo-optic switch based on a slot waveguide directional coupler

TL;DR

This paper introduces a silicon-organic hybrid thermo-optic switch utilizing a slot waveguide and nematic liquid crystal, achieving high efficiency and rapid response for integrated photonic applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel passively biased 2x2 thermo-optic switch with enhanced power efficiency and speed, leveraging the unique properties of slot waveguides and liquid crystal cladding.

Findings

Power consumption of 0.58 mW

Thermal response time of 11.8 microseconds

Figure-of-merit of 6.8

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a passively biased 2 by 2 thermo-optic switch with high power efficiency and fast response time. The device benefits from the highly concentrated optical field of a slot waveguide mode and the strong thermo-optic effect of a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) cladding. The NLC fills the nano-slot region and is aligned by the subwavelength grating inside. The measured power consumption and thermal time constant are 0.58 mW and 11.8 microsecond, respectively, corresponding to a figure-of-merit of 6.8. The proposed silicon-organic hybrid device provides a new solution to design thermo-optic actuators having lower power consumption and fast operation speed.