Design of plasmonic modulators with vanadium dioxide on silicon-on-insulator

We present design of plasmonic modulators using Vanadium Dioxide (VO 2 ) as modulating material realised on silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer with only 200 nm×140 nm modulating section within 1 um×3 μm device footprint. By utilising the large refractive index contrast between the metallic and semiconductor phases of VO2, the modulator can achieve a broad working wavelength range from 1100 nm to 1800 nm around C-band, with a high modulation depth of 21.5dB/um. We also analyse effects of using seed layer of different dielectric materials for growing VO2 on modulation index by exploring the mixed combination of VO 2 and different dielectric materials. Our device geometries can have potential applications in the development of next-generation miniaturised high-frequency optical modulators in silicon photonics for optical communications.