In order to manufacture large-scale photonic devices of various dimensions at a low cost, a number of printing-based patterning techniques have been developed.

In an on-chip silicon-organic hybrid electro-optic (EO) modulator, the mode overlap with EO materials, in-device effective r₃₃, and propagation loss are among the most critical factors that determine the performance of the modulator. Various waveguide structures have been proposed to optimize these factors, yet there is a lack of comprehensive consideration on all of them. In this Letter, a one-dimensional (1D) photonic crystal (PC) slot waveguide structure is proposed that takes all these factors into consideration. The proposed structure takes advantage of the strong mode confinement within a low-index region in a conventional slot waveguide and the slow-light enhancement from the 1D PC structure. Its simple geometry makes it robust to resist fabrication imperfections and helps reduce the propagation loss. Using it as a phase shifter in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure, an integrated silicon-organic hybrid EO modulator was experimentally demonstrated. The observed effective EO coefficient is as high as 490 pm/V. The measured half-wave voltage and length product is less than 1  V·cm and can be further improved. A potential bandwidth of 61 GHz can be achieved and further improved by tailoring the doping profile. The proposed structure offers a competitive novel phase-shifter design, which is simple, highly efficient, and with low optical loss, for on-chip silicon-organic hybrid EO modulators.

We investigate surface plasmon modes supported by flat-top silver nano-ridges. We calculate the mode electromagnetic field distribution, the dispersion curve, the travel range, and the figure-of-merit of the nano-ridge mode. We find that the nanoridge surface plasmon modes are quasi-TEM modes with longitudinal field components three orders of magnitude smaller than the transverse field components.The quasi-TEM nature of mode profiles reveals that the propagation of free electron oscillations on the top of the nano-ridge contributes mainly to the tightly confined ridge mode. We also find that as the width of the nano-ridge decreases, the ridge mode becomes more tightly confined on the ridge top. As the width of the nano-ridge increases, the nano-ridge mode approaches two decoupled right-angle wedge plasmon modes.

In atomic multi-level systems, adiabatic elimination (AE) is a method used to minimize complicity of the system by eliminating irrelevant and strongly coupled levels by detuning them from one another. Such a three-level system, for instance, can be mapped onto physically in the form of a three-waveguide system. Actively detuning the coupling strength between the respective waveguide modes allows modulating light to propagate through the device, as proposed here. The outer waveguides act as an effective two-photonic-mode system similar to ground and excited states of a three-level atomic system, while the center waveguide is partially plasmonic. In AE regime, the amplitude of the middle waveguide oscillates much faster when compared to the outer waveguides leading to a vanishing field build up. As a result, the plasmonic intermediate waveguide becomes a “dark state,” hence nearly zero decibel insertion loss is expected with modulation depth (extinction ratio) exceeding 25 dB. Here, the modulation mechanism relies on switching this waveguide system from a critical coupling regime to AE condition via electrostatically tuning the free-carrier concentration and hence the optical index of a thin indium thin oxide (ITO) layer resides in the plasmonic center waveguide. This alters the effective coupling length and the phase mismatching condition thus modulating in each of its outer waveguides. Our results also promise a power consumption as low as 49.74aJ/bit. Besides, we expected a modulation speed of 160 GHz reaching to millimeter wave range applications. Such anticipated performance is a direct result of both the unity-strong tunability of the plasmonic optical mode in conjunction with utilizing ultra-sensitive modal coupling between the critically coupled and the AE regimes. When taken together, this new class of modulators paves the way for next generation both for energy and speed conscience optical short-reach communication such as those found in interconnects.