Electrothermally Modulated Nanophotonic Waveguide-integrated Ring Resonator

Abstract

Reconfigurable integrated chips of photonic components and networks are envisaged to play a key role in realizing highly efficient integrated photonic information processing. Electrothermally modulated optical effect (ETMOE) is a powerful thermo-optic tuning mechanism for silicon photonic devices, enabling precise optical control via localized Joule heating. We present a rigorous and three-dimensional electronic-photonic co-integrated approach with the nonlinear numerical coupling of temperature and wavelength-dependent material properties to comprehensively model ETMOE in silicon waveguides and resonators. A platinum-based symmetric heater is optimized using advanced true 3D numerical simulations, achieving efficient ETMOE-based tuning while mitigating asymmetric heat distribution. In addition to a complete design and analysis of the fully integrated three-dimensional switch, we also evaluate single-mode waveguide cutoff, heater-to-waveguide separation, heater dimensions, and thermal dissipation, providing a framework for ETMOE-based optimization. The findings contribute to energy-efficient, programmable photonic systems for neuromorphic computing, optical interconnects, and reconfigurable photonic networks.