Novel ultra-high-speed deeply etched polymer electro-optic modulator

In this paper we present a novel ultra-high-speed polymer electro-optic modulator that incorporates high permittivity material cladding on the side walls of the device. We show that by packing the side walls of the modulator with this material and varying the width of the dielectric stack and electrodes that broadband operation can be achieved whilst maintaining a very low drive voltage in a compact device. The full-wave finite element analysis is employed in order to determine any frequency dispersion effects with respect to the modulators half-wave voltage-length product, characteristic impedance, microwave effective index and microwave dielectric losses.