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Electro-absorption Modulator with Dual Carrier Accumulation Layers Based on Epsilon-Near-Zero ITO

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Abstract

An electro-absorption modulator based on indium tin oxide is proposed by constructing a waveguide consisting of metal-dielectric-ITO-dielectric-Si stack. Applying a negative voltage bias on the ITO layer, carrier accumulation occurs at both dielectric-ITO interfaces, which dramatically changes the guided mode properties due to the epsilon-near-zero effect. By tuning the real part of the permittivity around zero, the guided plasmonic mode concentrates in either ITO or dielectric layers, resulting in a high propagation loss. These dual carrier accumulation layers significantly improve the extinction ratio of the modulator. A further improvement is obtained by using high refractive index dielectric thin layers, which provides a strong optical confinement in the carrier accumulation layers. The dual carrier accumulation layer device shows a 200 % increase of the modulation efficiency compared to a single accumulation layer design. A modulation depth of 9.9 dB/μm can be achieved by numerical simulation.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61405235 and 61574158), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province for Youths (No. BK20130365), Suzhou Science and Technology Development Program Foundation (No. ZXG201425), and the Opened Fund of the State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics (No. IOSKL2013KF01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Lab of Nanodevices and Applications—CAS & Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215123, People’s Republic of China

    Lin Jin, Qin Chen, Wanwan Liu & Shichao Song

  2. State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Qin Chen

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  1. Lin Jin
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  2. Qin Chen
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  3. Wanwan Liu
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Correspondence to Qin Chen.

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Jin, L., Chen, Q., Liu, W. et al. Electro-absorption Modulator with Dual Carrier Accumulation Layers Based on Epsilon-Near-Zero ITO. Plasmonics 11, 1087–1092 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-015-0146-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-015-0146-5

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