Slot-waveguide

A slot-waveguide is an optical waveguide that guides strongly confined light in a subwavelength-scale low refractive index region by total internal reflection. A slot-waveguide is an optical waveguide that guides strongly confined light in a subwavelength-scale low refractive index region by total internal reflection. A slot-waveguide consists of two strips or slabs of high-refractive-index (nH) materials separated by a subwavelength-scale low-refractive-index (nS) slot region and surrounded by low-refractive-index (nC) cladding materials. The principle of operation of a slot-waveguide is based on the discontinuity of the electric field (E-field) at high-refractive-index-contrast interfaces. Maxwell’s equations state that, to satisfy the continuity of the normal component of the electric displacement field D at an interface, the corresponding E-field must undergo a discontinuity with higher amplitude in the low-refractive-index side. That is, at an interface between two regions of dielectric constants εS and εH, respectively: where the superscript N indicates the normal components of D and E vector fields. Thus, if nS<<nH, then ESN>>EHN. Given that the slot critical dimension (distance between the high-index slabs or strips) is comparable to the exponential decay length of the fundamental eigenmode of the guided-wave structure, the resulting E-field normal to the high-index-contrast interfaces is enhanced in the slot and remains high across it. The power density in the slot is much higher than that in the high-index regions. Since wave propagation is due to total internal reflection, there is no interference effect involved and the slot-structure exhibits very low wavelength sensitivity. The slot-waveguide was born in 2003 as an unexpected outcome of theoretical studies on metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) electro-optic modulation in high-confinement silicon photonic waveguides by Vilson Rosa de Almeida and Carlos Angulo Barrios, then a Ph.D. student and a Postdoctoral Associate, respectively, at Cornell University. Theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration of the first slot-waveguide implemented in the Si/SiO2 material system at 1.55 μm operation wavelength were reported by Cornell researchers in 2004.