Silicon-on-insulator slot-waveguide design trade-offs

Silicon-on-insulator slot-waveguide structures are designed and analysed numerically. We present our theoretical investigation of field confinement factors and effective nonlinear areas for different waveguide structures in order to find optimized geometrical dimensions. It is shown that a slot-waveguide with a height of 220 nm, a slot width of 180 nm and a silicon rail width of 180 nm provides a five times higher field confinement in the cladding region compared to conventional strip-waveguides which explains the high sensitivity of slot-waveguide based label-free bio-sensors.