A novel SOI Schottky electro-optical modulator for GHz high-speed switching

Thermo-optical and electro-optical (plasma dispersion) effects for silicon based integrated optical modulators are becoming attractive and effective solutions for telecommunications applications such as switching for programmable optical add-drop multiplexing for WDM. In this paper, a simple yet highly efficient novel electro-optical modulator device that exploits a SOI Schottky diode integrated in silicon rib wave-guide is proposed. Numerical 2D electrical (ATLAS/sup /spl copy/1/) and 3D optical (BPM/spl I.bar/CAD/sup /spl copy/2/)simulations are used to validate the principle and to explore the performances of the new device. We demonstrate that the SOI Schottky modulator has much better injection efficiency and significantly lower thermal effects compared to any conventional electro-optical modulators that use SOI p-i-n diodes, and, furthermore, by appropriate scaling down, can achieve unrivaled GHz high speed switching.