Thermal analysis for a photonic Si ridge wire with a submicron metal heater

A photonic Si ridge wire with a submicron metal heater and the associated thermal analysis are presented. When the up-cladding thickness becomes thinner, the thermal response becomes faster while the temperature at the core region remains almost the same. When the under-etched depth in the insulator layer increases, the stable temperature increases linearly at the same power consumption. This indicates that a deeper etching is preferred to achieve a lower power consumption (for the same temperature increment). Our numerical simulation also shows that the power consumption of the present Si waveguide structure is almost less than 1/10 of that for a conventional one and the response time is about half of that of the conventional one.