Investigation of Dispersion and Nonlinear Effects in Silicon Nanocrystal Slot Waveguides for Surface Optical Sensing

In this paper, an investigation of silicon nanocrystals-based sandwiched slot waveguides which are dispersion engineered for exciting optical solitons inside very short structures (only 3 mm long) is proposed. The possibility of using these structures for efficient surface sensing devices has been explored for the first time in cases of either air or water solution cover.