No abstract

Ultra-compact transverse magnetic (TM)-pass polarizer based on silicon on sapphire (SOS) platform is proposed and analysed. Low power consumption, high linearity and high speed of transmission are the major advantages of the SOS platform in different commercial applications especially in the mid infrared region.The suggested structure has bimetallic configuration of aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO) and zirconium nitride (ZrN) to highly attenuate the quasi transverse electric (TE) mode. This is due to the coupling between the fundamental TE and the surface plasmon modes. However, the transverse magnetic mode can propagate with minimal losses. At 2.0 µm operating wavelength, the proposed TM-pass polarizer realizes 20.3 dB extinction ratio (ER) with 0.14 dB insertion loss (IL) at a device length of 3.0 µm. Therefore, the reported design has advantages of compact length, high efficiency and CMOS-compatibility.

No abstract

Efficient mid-infrared (MIR) optical modulator is reported and numerically analyzed for both the transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarized modes. The proposed design is based on the silicon-on-calcium-fluoride platform with vanadium dioxide (VO2) as a phase changing material. Due to the attractive property of its phase transition between dielectric (ON) and metallic (OFF) states under the effect of an applied electric field, VO2 is utilized to enable the modulation process. At an operating wavelength of 3.5 μm, the reported modulator realizes an extinction ratio (ER) of 10.9 dB/μm with an insertion loss (IL) of 0.24 dB/μm for the TE polarized mode. However, for the TM polarized mode, an ER, and IL of 9.5 dB/μm, and 0.19 dB/μm, respectively are achieved. Additionally, the suggested design has a good fabrication tolerance of ± 10% where the ER is better than 10.4 dB/μm and 8.6 dB/μm for the TE and TM polarized modes with IL less than 0.26 dB/ μm. Therefore, the suggested modulator can play a pivotal role in different MIR applications including imaging, sensing, security, and communications.