Optical switching in hybrid VO2/Si waveguides thermally triggered by lateral microheaters

© 2018 Optical Society of America. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibited"[EN] The performance of optical devices relying in vanadium dioxide (VO2) technology compatible with the silicon platform depends on the polarization of light and VO2 properties. In this work, optical switching in hybrid VO2/Si waveguides thermally triggered by lateral microheaters is achieved with insertion losses below 1 dB and extinction ratios above 20 dB in a broad bandwidth larger than 30 nm. The optical switching response has been optimized for TE and TM polarizations by using a homogeneous and a granular VO2 layer, respectively, with a small impact on the electrical power consumption. The stability and reversibility between switching states showing the possibility of bistable performance is also demonstrated. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement.Funding from project TEC2016-76849 (MINECO/FEDER, UE) is acknowledged. The SOI samples were fabricated at IHP (we acknowledge Lars Zimmermann) in the framework of FP7-ICT-2013-11-619456 SITOGA project. Irene Olivares and Roberto Larrea also acknowledge respectively the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and the Ecuadorian Government for funding their grant. P.H. acknowledges support from Becas Chile-CONICYT.Olivares-Sánchez-Mellado, I.; Sánchez Diana, LD.; Parra Gómez, J.; Larrea-Luzuriaga, RA.; Griol Barres, A.; Menghini, M.; Homm, P.... (2018). Optical switching in hybrid VO2/Si waveguides thermally triggered by lateral microheaters. Optics Express. 26(10):12387-12395. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.01238712387123952610Sorger, V. J., Lanzillotti-Kimura, N. 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