Design and Analysis of a Miniature Intensity Modulator Based on a Silicon-Polymer-Metal Hybrid Plasmonic Waveguide

We propose a miniature optical intensity modulator based on a silicon-polymer-metal hybrid plasmonic waveguide. Benefiting from the high mode confinement of hybrid plasmonic waveguide and the high linear electro-optic effect of polymer material, the intensity modulator is ultra-compact with a length of only ~ 13 μm. The device is optimized using numerical simulations based on the finite element method (FEM). The modulator exhibits a large modulation bandwidth of 90 GHz, a modulation depth of 12 dB at 6 V, and low power consumption of 24.3 fJ/bit.