Numerical analysis and simulation of graphene assisted silicon-nitride waveguide

Abstract

To address the increased demand for high performance nonlinear integrated photonic devices, this thesis investigates a potential solution to the intrinsic low nonlinear response of silicon nitride waveguides by integrating a layer of graphene with the silicon-nitride. This thesis represents a simulation, analyze and design of graphene integrated silicon-nitride waveguide. To study the effect of this extra layer, a detailed simulation is performed using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method, and the results are compared with those of the commercial software Lumerical FDTD.

The two methods produce results that strongly agree with each other, and show that the Kerr nonlinear response of silicon-nitride can be enhanced by as much as 7.6% through the integration of a single layer of graphene. In addition, The effect of the length, input power, and practical problems that may arise are studied on this structure in the presence and absence of an extra silicon-oxide/silicon substrate layer. The results show a great improvement in the nonlinear performance of this waveguide.