Locally induced electro-optic activity in silicon nanophotonic devices

摘要

Recently, the interest in silicon-based nanophotonic devices with electro-optic functionality has strongly increased. In Silicon a second-order electro-optic activity can be induced by breaking the inversion symmetry of the crystal lattice. Commonly this is done by straining the silicon lattice for example by applying a SiliconNitride layer to a nanophotonic waveguide [1,2]. Another innovative approach has been demonstrated, which is based on a chemical surface-activation in a CMOS-compatible plasma-supported dry etching process [3].