Modeling and experimental investigation of an integrated optical microheater in silicon-on-insulator

A linear piecewise model has been formulated to analyze the performance of a metallic microheater integrated with single-mode waveguides (λ∼1550  nm) in silicon-on-insulator (SOI). The model has been used to evaluate integrated optical microheaters fabricated in a SOI substrate with 2 µm device layer thickness. The Fabry-Perot modulation technique has been used to extract the effective thermo-optic phase shift and response time. The effective thermal power budget of P_eff,π∼500  µW (out of actually consumed power P_π=1.1  mW) for a π phase shift and a switching time of τ∼9  µs, have been recorded for a typical Ti heater stripe of length L_H=50  µm, width W_H=2  µm, and thickness t_H∼150  nm, integrated with a Fabry-Perot waveguide cavity of length ∼20  mm. It has been shown that the performance of a heater improves (in terms of power budget) as the length of a microheater decreases. However, smaller heater size requires higher joule heating to obtain a desired phase shift, which is again found to be dependent on polarization of the guided mode because of thermal stress.