Silicon slot waveguide dispersion analysis and engineering through dynamic excess carrier generation

This work studies the fundamental mode and dispersion relation of a slot waveguide made of intrinsic silicon as the high index region and Air as the low index region by solving the full vectorial wave equation using vectorial finite element method. The objective is to identify the effect of dynamically inducing high excess carrier concentrations in silicon on the slot mode and it dispersion. Tracking the slot mode over a range of wavelengths reveals a reduction in the slot mode effective index upon introducing high concentration of excess carriers. This can be exploited in the dynamic tuning of a silicon slot waveguide dispersion and hence the operation of any sensor based on such waveguide by dynamically generate excess carrier at runtime.