Modelling and Simulation of Reduced Height Strip Type Nanophotonic Waveguide Using Si3N4 as Cladding Material for Filter Applications

The nanophotonic waveguide is gaining high popularity, because its significance is not only limited to the optical interconnects, but also it has been widely accepted for the sensor, filter, and other applications. The standard height of SOI-based nanophotonic waveguide is around 220 nm, which has already been explored extensively. However, some researchers have recently focused the attention on the reduced height waveguides (of 100 nm). Moreover, the photonic waveguides with the reduced height are suffering from high dispersion phenomena. To overcome this problem, the over-cladding technique, using silicon nitride (Si3N4) material, has been opted in the current work that improves the dispersion characteristics and other waveguide parameters. From the analysis, it has been observed that without the over-cladding layer, the dispersion is around -8000 ps/nm-km. Moreover, utilizing the over-cladding layer of thicknesses 200 nm and 100 nm, the dispersion values have been reduced respectively to around -3300 ps/nm-km and - 2000 ps/nm-km, with their respective strip widths of 500 nm and 800 nm, at the operating wavelength of 1.55 mu m. Further, the current work can be extended for the design of optical filters and other related applications.

Automated summary

The popularity of nanophotonic waveguides is increasing due to their importance in optical interconnects and their wide acceptance in applications such as sensors and filters. Furthermore, the use of over-cladding techniques can improve the dispersion characteristics of nanophotonic waveguides with reduced height.