Modelling domain switching of ferroelectric BaTiO3 integrated in silicon photonic waveguides

We present a model to investigate the local change of the refractive index of a ferroelectric material employed as upper cladding of silicon photonic waveguides. The model is used to predict the saturation voltage required to achieve complete domain switching in case of a BaTiO3 film and to evaluate the performance of non-volatile phase-actuators integrated in silicon waveguides. Results show that the refractive index change associated with the domain switching of the BaTiO3 cladding enables the realization of compact phase actuators with a length of few tens of micron. The proposed model has a general validity and can be used to other ferroelectric materials as well as to other semiconductor or dielectric waveguides.