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Photonics and Nanostructures Fundamentals and Applications xxx (2013) xxxxxx
www.elsevier.com/locate/photonics

Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal

nanobeam microcavities for low-power and ultrafast
all-optical switching
Zi-Ming Meng a,b,*, Yi-Hua Hu a, Chen Wang b, Xiao-Lan Zhong b,
Wei Ding b, Zhi-Yuan Li b,**
b

a
School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, Peoples Republic of China
Laboratory of Optical Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 603, Beijing 100190, Peoples Republic of China

Received 23 June 2013; received in revised form 28 July 2013; accepted 26 August 2013

Abstract
Owing to the unique optical properties high-Q photonic crystal nanobeam microcavities have been demonstrated in a variety of
materials. In this paper the design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam microcavities is investigated using
the three-dimensional plane-wave expansion method and finite-difference time-domain method. We first discuss the design of highQ nanobeam microcavities in silicon-on-insulator, after which the polymer is introduced into the air void to form the hybrid
structures. Quality factor as high as 1  104 has been obtained for our silicon-polymer hybrid nanobeam microcavities without
exhaustive parameter examination. In addition the field distribution of resonant mode can be tuned to largely overlap with polymer
materials. Because of the overwhelmingly large Kerr nonlinearity of polymer over silicon, the application in all-optical switching is
presented by studying the shift of the resonant frequency on the change of refractive index of polymer. The minimum switching
intensity of only 0.37 GW/cm2 is extracted for our high-Q hybrid microcavities and the corresponding single pulse energy is also
discussed according to the pumping methods. The total switching time is expected to be restricted by the photon lifetime in cavity
due to the ultrafast response speed of polymer. Our silicon-polymer hybrid nanobeam microcavities show great promise in
constructing small-sized all-optical devices or circuits with advantages of possessing low-power and ultrafast speed simultaneously.
# 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Photonic crystal cavity; All-optical switching; Silicon-polymer hybrid

1. Introduction
Since numerous theoretical results indicate that
ultrahigh-Q microcavities can be realized by adopting

* Corresponding author at: School of Physics and Optoelectronic

Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou
510006, Peoples Republic of China. Tel.: +86 20 39322265.
** Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mengzm@gdut.edu.cn (Z.-M. Meng),
lizy@aphy.iphy.ac.cn (Z.-Y. Li).

only one-dimensional (1D) periodicity, photonic crystal

nanobeam microcavities (PCNMs) have been intensively and extensively investigated in various materials
such as semiconductor, polymer, silicon dioxide and
even single-crystal diamond [18]. Owing to the unique
optical properties such as small footprint, ease of design
and fabrication, PCNMs with direct coupling between
waveguide and cavity have been used to construct lowthreshold laser, sensitive sensor, all-optical switch and
modulator [912]. In addition PCNMs have been found
as an excellent platform to study the optomechanical

1569-4410/$ see front matter # 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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effect [1315]. Previously most of the PCNMs are

fabricated in semiconductor materials, silicon for
example, because the fabrication method is compatible
with the modern microelectronic integrated circuit
technology. So PCNMs based on semiconductor
materials show unprecedented advantages in building
integrated and small-sized all-optical switches.
Recently all-optical switching with pico- or femtojoule switching energy has been demonstrated in
silicon-on-insulator (SOI) PCNMs [11,12]. Extremely
low power optical bistability has also been reported in
silicon 1D PC nanocavity [16]. However, the total
switching time is hundreds of picoseconds or nanoseconds, due to the recombination time of free carriers
generated in semiconductor materials. Despite various
sophisticated manipulations such as ion implantation,
placement of reverse bias, and using ultrasmall
nanocavities, the total switching time is still restricted
in the picosecond or nanosecond range [1719].
It is argued that the strong optical nonlinearity in
semiconductor is mainly caused by the generation of
free carriers, which is responsible for the slow switching
behavior. One feasible solution to solve the problem is
to avoid using the nonlinearity in semiconductor
materials for all-optical switching. Quite recently
Maksymov introduces the concept of hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystal nanobeam cavities for achieving
optical switching and logic gates, where a cylindrical
plasmonic nanoantenna is placed on the top surface of a
SOI PCNM to modify the transmission of resonant
frequency [20]. Another hybrid structure is proposed by
Schriever as a locally infiltrated slot PCNM, where the
electric field of the resonant frequency is largely
overlapped with the infiltrated nonlinear materials [21].
Nevertheless, the fabrication method for the above
mentioned hybrid PCNMs seems stringent, which
requires precisely positioning the metal nanoparticle
or locally infiltrating the slot region. Moreover, studies
on the switching time are still scarcely discussed for the
above hybrid structures.
Our previous investigations reveal that polymer
possesses excellent Kerr nonlinearity, which is well
suited for achieving ultrafast all-optical switching [22].
Lately we have successfully fabricated high-quality
semiconductor-polymer compound nonlinear PC slabs
based on the nanoimprint lithography technique
[23,24]. They are such kind of compound structures
where organic polymer materials are infiltrated completely into the void region of two-dimensional (2D)
semiconductor PC slabs. At the same time we have also
theoretically investigated the dynamics of all-optical
switching in a 1D semiconductor-polymer hybrid

nonlinear PC [25]. The conclusion is drawn that under

the pumping of femtosecond pulse the introduction of
highly nonlinear polymer material with femtosecond
relaxation time can realize all-optical switching in the
femtosecond range in spite of the slow response speed
of the semiconductor material. The physical origin is
attributed to the overwhelmingly large Kerr nonlinearity and ultrafast relaxation time of polymer. Although
semiconductor-polymer hybrid planar PC structures
have been investigated previously [26,27], almost all the
design schemes are based on the 2D patterns, where the
size of the devices is relatively large. Moreover, the
ways on how to achieve low-power and ultrafast
integrated all-optical switching for those hybrid
structures have not been sufficiently discussed [28].
On that consideration we put forward the concept of
silicon-polymer (Si-polymer) hybrid PCNMs, where
the device sizes can be greatly reduced and also possess
excellent Kerr nonlinearity.
According to the fabrication procedure in [24], it can
be envisaged that our Si-polymer hybrid PCNMs can be
fabricated as follows. The nanobeam microcavity
pattern is first sculpted onto the top Si layer of the
SOI structure by using the e-beam lithography and
reactive ion etching. Then polymer is uniformly
infiltrated into the air void region of the nanobeam
structure utilizing the nanoimprint lithography technique. In this case not only the air holes but also the top
and two side surfaces of Si nanobeam are entirely
covered with polymer. Hence specific design strategy
for realizing high quality factor is needed for our Sipolymer hybrid PCNMs. In our previous paper we
design a high-Q double-heterostructure PCNM in lowrefractive-index material, where mechanism of slow
group velocity at the band edge to enhance the quality
factor is implemented [29,30]. As is well known that
delicate taper segment between the cavity and mirror,
which is to avoid abrupt termination and reduce the
scattering loss, is widely chosen for the design of highQ PCNMs. Such a cavity configuration is of high
efficiency especially for high-refractive-index materials, semiconductor for example [3,4,31]. However, this
inevitably requires strict nanofabrication precision,
which will make the structure vulnerable to fabrication
imperfection. Therefore it is meaningful to examine
whether it is possible to extend our double-heterostructure scheme from low-refractive-index case to
high-refractive-index hybrid structure.
In this paper, we present the design of high-Q Sipolymer hybrid PCNMs based on the double-heterostructure configuration. Without exhaustive parameter
examination, quality factor as high as 1  104 is

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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obtained for our hybrid structures. All-optical switching

behavior is demonstrated by artificially varying the
refractive index of polymer and inspecting the shift of
the resonant frequency. Because the field distribution of
the resonant high-Q mode can be tuned to overlap with
the polymer materials, the minimum switching intensity
of only 0.37 GW/cm2 is extracted for our hybrid
microcavities. The total switching time is expected to be
a few picoseconds limited by the photon lifetime in
cavity due to the ultrafast response speed of polymer.
2. Design of high-Q double-heterostructure SiPS hybrid PCNM
In this case polystyrene (PS) is chosen for our
silicon-polymer hybrid structures, which is proved to
hold excellent Kerr nonlinearity [22]. Our doubleheterostructure Si-PS hybrid PCNM is schematically
illustrated in Fig. 1(c). It can be seen that a SOI
nanobeam structure is built by perforating periodic

cylindrical air holes in the Si waveguides with the entire

air void region infiltrated with PS material. The
thickness of the top PS layer and bottom silicon
dioxide substrate are fixed as 3a, where a is the distance
between adjacent holes. The width W and the thickness
H of the Si waveguide are set as 1.35a and 0.6a,
respectively. Additionally the linear refractive index of
silicon, silicon dioxide and polystyrene is chosen as 3.4,
1.45 and 1.59. As has been explicitly discussed in [29],
our double-heterostructure PCNMs can be constructed
by inserting another 1D PC (PC2) between two identical
1D PCs (PC1) in an optical waveguide, where the
dielectric band edge of the PC2 lies within the modal
gap of the surrounding PC1. In fact not only the
dielectric band edge but also the air band edge of the
PC2 can be designed to locate inside the modal gap of
the PC1, from which we can control the resonant
electric field to distribute in Si or PS. This point will be
discussed later. Normally there are two types of doubleheterostructure PCNM. One is to modulate the hole

Fig. 1. Calculated band diagram of the pure SOI nanobeam structure with hole radius of 0.3a (a) and 0.4a (b). The hollow circle line in (a) represents
the first (dielectric) band of lattice constant 0.9a. The gray area corresponds to the light cone region of SiO2. (c) Calculated band diagram of the pure
Si-PS hybrid nanobeam structure with hole radius of 0.3a. The hollow circle and square lines represent the first (dielectric) band of lattice constant
0.9a and the second (air) band of lattice constant 1.1a, respectively. The gray area corresponds to the light cone region of PS. Only the bands with
even mode distribution with respect to the Y = 0 plane bisecting the Si nanobeam are shown. (d) Schematic illustration of Si-PS hybrid PCNM with
parameters W = 1.35a, H = 0.6a, Nx0 = 5, Nx = 21, and ac = 0.9a. The red and green lines stand for the source and detection plane when calculating
the transmission spectra. The red arrow stands for the position of the pump beam for Pumping II. The Y = 0 cross-section shows three-layer structure
with the top PS layer, central Si layer and bottom SiO2 layer. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to
the web version of the article.)

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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radius in the center cavity region, and the other is to

modulate the lattice constant, which we call the holeand lattice-modulated double-heterostructure PCNM,
respectively. Fig. 1(c) shows a lattice-modulated
double-heterostructure PCNM with a cavity lattice
constant ac = 0.9a. The parameters Nx and Nx0
correspond to the number of air holes in the cavity
and mirror region, respectively. So approximately the
cavity length can be defined as (Nx + 1)a or (Nx + 1)ac
for the hole- and lattice-modulated PCNMs. It is found
that Nx0 = 5 for the mirror wall is sufficient to observe
an obvious photonic band gap (PBG) effect in the X
direction due to the high-refractive-index of Si.
Before studying the Si-PS hybrid PCNM we first
examine the double-heterostructure PCNM in SOI, after
which PS is introduced to fill the air void region of the
SOI nanobeam structure. This is believed to be a good
example to testify the validity of our design scheme for
the high-refractive-index material. For the design of
SOI double-heterostruture PCNM we calculate the band
structure of PCNM without defect or cavity region for
the TE polarization (i.e. electric filed mainly in the XYplane) using the freely available MIT Photonic Bands
(MIT) software package [32]. In order to accurately
calculate the band diagram sufficiently thick air interval
in Y and Z direction surrounding the SOI nanobeam
structure is used in the unit cell and the space resolution
is 0.05a in X, Y and Z directions. In all band diagrams we
only present bands with even mode distribution with
respect to the Y = 0 plane bisecting the Si waveguide.
The results are exhibited in Fig. 1(a) and (b)
corresponding to the hole radius of r = 0.3a and
r = 0.4a, respectively. It can be found that the first
band edge (or dielectric band edge) for the radius of

0.4a is up-shifted to lie inside the modal gap of 0.3a.

Reducing the lattice constant is another way to increase
the frequency of bands. Fixing the hole radius as 0.3a,
Fig. 1(a) also shows that the first band edge of
periodicity 0.9a is located inside the modal gap of
periodicity a.
So for the hole-modulated double-heterostructure
PCNM the defect region is introduced by enlarging the
air hole radius to 0.4a while setting the hole radius in the
mirror region as 0.3a. The three-dimensional finitedifference time-domain (FDTD) method is used to
calculate the transmission spectra and the Pade
approximate method is executed to derive the quality
factor of high-Q mode [33,34]. Perfect matched layers
(PML) are employed to surround the PCNM structure
and the space grid size is chosen as 0.05a in all
directions. Transmission spectra of different cavity
length for hole-modulated cavities are presented in
Fig. 2(a). It is obvious that as the cavity length increases
multiple resonant peaks appear at the dielectric band
edge of pure PC1. The resonant peak, which is closest to
the dielectric band edge of the corresponding center
pure PC2 of radius 0.4a in Fig. 1(b), has the narrowest
linewidth compared to the other resonant frequencies.
The maximum quality factor for the cavity length of
Nx = 7 is only 1294 while that of Nx = 21 is raised to
26,794, which is presented in Fig. 2(b). This trend
agrees well with what we find in low-refractive-index
PCNM. The physical origin can be explained that as the
cavity length increases the defect mode will couple with
the band edge mode of the center PC2 region so as to
utilize the slow group velocity to enhance the quality
factor. Moreover, lattice-modulated cavities are proved
to possess a higher quality factor than hole-modulated

Fig. 2. (a) Calculated transmission spectra of cavity length of Nx = 7 and Nx = 21 for the hole-modulated (0.4a) double-heterostructure PCNMs. For
reference the transmission spectrum of pure structure without cavity region is added as the red dot line. (b) The extracted transmission profile of the
high-Q resonant mode by using the Pade approximate method. The red solid line represents the Lorentzian fitting. (For interpretation of the
references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of the article.)

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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Fig. 3. (a) Calculated transmission spectrum of cavity length of Nx = 21 for the lattice-modulated (0.9a) double-heterostructure PCNMs. For
reference the transmission spectrum of pure structure without cavity region is added as the red dot line. (b) The extracted transmission profile of the
high-Q resonant mode by using the Pade approximate method. The red solid line represents the Lorentzian fitting. (For interpretation of the
references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of the article.)

cavities under the same cavity length and modulation

magnitude [29]. As a result, we build a latticemodulated SOI PCNM with the same cavity length
of Nx = 21, where the hole radius is fixed as 0.3a and the
defect lattice constant is set as 0.9a. The extracted
highest quality factor is now up to 110,243, nearly one
order of magnitude higher than that of hole-modulated
cavities, as is exhibited in Fig. 3.
At this stage we have proved that our doubleheterostructure design scheme can be extended to highrefractive-index SOI structure to achieve high quality
factor. Q-factor as high as 1  105 has been obtained for
lattice-modulated double-heterostructure PCNMs in SOI
material. Based on the above high-Q lattice-modulated

SOI nanobeam microcavities PS is directly infiltrated

into the air void region to form our Si-PS hybrid
microcavities. The band diagram in Fig. 1(c) reveals that
the modal gap confinement maintains even after PS is
introduced into the nanobeam frame. The transmission
spectrum for the Si-PS hybrid lattice-modulated PCNM
is presented in Fig. 4(a), where five resonant peaks
remain at the dielectric band edge of the pure hybrid
structure. Compared to the bare lattice-modulated cavity
the largest quality factor is reduced from 110,243 to
14,563 when infiltrating with PS, which is represented in
Fig. 4(b). This is primarily caused by the reduction of
refractive index contrast leading to weaker PBG in the
propagation direction. Although the quality factor of our

Fig. 4. (a) Calculated transmission spectrum of cavity length of Nx = 21 for the Si-PS hybrid lattice-modulated double-heterostructure PCNMs,
where modulated lattice constant is ac = 0.9a. For reference the transmission spectrum of pure hybrid structure without cavity region is added as the
red dot line. (b) The extracted transmission profile of the high-Q resonant mode by using the Pade approximate method. The red solid line represents
the Lorentzian fitting. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of the article.)

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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Fig. 5. (a) Calculated transmission spectrum of cavity length of Nx = 21 for the Si-PS hybrid lattice-modulated double-heterostructure PCNMs,
where modulated lattice constant is ac = 1.1a. For reference the transmission spectrum of pure hybrid structure without cavity region is added as the
red dot line. (b) The extracted transmission profile of the high-Q resonant mode by using the Pade approximate method. The red solid line represents
the Lorentzian fitting. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of the article.)

hybrid microcavity is only in the order of 104 less than

those reported semiconductor based PCNMs, our
structures need not any fine tune manipulation on the
hole or lattice parameters. Exhaustive parameter
examination is also excluded by simply stretching the
cavity length. Considering the all-optical switching time,
when the resonant wavelength corresponds to 1.55 mm,
the photon lifetime in cavity reaches approximately
8.23  1012 s for Q-factor of 104. So the magnitude of
quality factor for our Si-PS hybrid microcavity is
acceptable for realizing ultrafast all-optical switching.
As has been mentioned in the beginning of this
section we can also locate the air band edge of the center
PC2 within the modal gap of the surrounding PC1. This
is shown in Fig. 1(c) that the second band or air band
edge of lattice constant 1.1a is right inside the modal
gap of lattice constant a. In this situation we change the
defect lattice constant from 0.9a to 1.1a while keeping
the cavity length as Nx = 21 and hole radius as 0.3a. In
Fig. 5(a) it can be seen that two resonant peaks emerge
approaching the air band edge of the center pure hybrid
PC2 of 1.1a in Fig. 1(c). The quality factor of the high-Q
mode is 9378 and is a little smaller than that of defect
lattice constant 0.9a due to higher frequency near the
light cone region. According to the definition of modal
volume [3], the derived Veff for the lattice-modulation of
0.9a and 1.1a cavity is 1.16 (l/n)3 and 2.96 (l/n)3,
where l and n stand for resonant wavelength and the
refractive index of silicon, respectively.
3. All-optical switching in Si-PS hybrid PCNMs
Because of the overwhelmingly large Kerr nonlinearity (n2 = 1.15  1012 cm2/W [22]. The n2 of

silicon is approximately 3  1014 cm2/W for comparison [25]) and ultrafast response speed of PS, it is
reasonable to assume that the contribution to the change
of refractive index of our Si-PS hybrid PCNMs comes
from PS material solely, especially under the excitation
of femtosecond optical pulse. In this circumstance alloptical switching in our hybrid PCNMs is investigated by
artificially varying the refractive index of PS and
checking the shift of the resonant frequency with high
quality factor. The results are presented in Fig. 6 for three
different refractive index changes of PS listed as
Dn = 0.001, 0.005, and 0.01. Apparently as the refractive
index of PS becomes larger the resonant frequency shifts
to lower frequency for both lattice-modulation of 0.9a
and 1.1a. However, the shift magnitude for the latticemodulation of 1.1a is more sensitive to the change of
refractive index of PS compared to that of 0.9a. This is
obvious in Fig. 7 by investigating the dependence of the
resonant wavelength on the change of refractive index of
PS, where we initialize the original resonant wavelength
as 1.55 mm. Hence the derived slope of the linear fitting
curve for 1.1a is 391 nm/RIU while that for 0.9a is only
145 nm/RIU. The reason can be found by examining the
electric field distribution of the two lattice-modulated
cavities. Fig. 8 shows that the electric field energy (jEyj2)
mainly distributes in the Si material for the latticemodulation of 0.9a. On the contrary the electric field for
the lattice-modulation of 1.1a primarily lies in the hole
region filled with PS material. The large overlap between
field energy and PS material results in sensitive
dependence of resonant wavelength on the refractive
index change of PS.
In Fig. 6 it is shown that the change magnitude of
0.001 is enough to shift the resonant frequency away the

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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Fig. 6. Resonant frequency shift on the change of refractive index of PS, with modulated lattice constant of 0.9a (a) and 1.1a (b). The refractive index
change of PS is Dn = 0.001, 0.005, and 0.01.

Fig. 7. Dependence of the resonant wavelength on the change of refractive index of PS. The dash and solid line represent the linear fitting for
modulated lattice constant of 1.1a and 0.9a, respectively.

original position leading to high contrast all-optical

switching. As has been reported in [35] the relation
between the frequency shift df and the change of
refractive index dn can be given as
df
dl
dn

s ;
f0
l0
n

(1)

where s specifies the fraction of the total energy of the

mode that is stored in the region where dn is being
applied. Furthermore the minimum index change dnmin
required for switching satisfies
 
dn
  1 :
(2)
n
sQ
min
So the minimum intensity Imin for switching can be
deduced from
dnmin n2 I min :

(3)

Substituting the corresponding values into Eqs. (1)

(3) the minimum intensity for the lattice-modulation of
0.9a and 1.1a is 0.63 GW/cm2 and 0.37 GW/cm2,
respectively.
Pump-probe scheme is always implemented to
achieve all-optical switching. In general there are two
pumping methods, which we name as Pumping I and
Pumping II, respectively. Pumping I is to launch the
pump pulse at the input waveguide, which is marked
as the red line in Fig. 1(d). Pumping II is to send the
pump pulse from the top of the cavity region perfectly
normal to the structure so as not to couple into the
resonant mode, which is indicated as the red arrow in
Fig. 1(d). For both of situations the lifetime in cavity
is about 8 ps for Q-factor of 104, when the resonant
wavelength corresponds to 1.55 mm. The frequency
of the pump and probe beam is resonant with the
high-Q mode, while the position of the probe beam is

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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Fig. 8. Electric field profile (jEyj2) in the Z = 0 plane bisecting the Si waveguide for the high-Q mode of modulated lattice constant of 1.1a (a) and
0.9a (b). (c) and (d) are the YZ plane positioned by the black dash line in (a) and (b), respectively. The white solid arrows in (a) indicate the length of
the input or output waveguide Dxwg and the cavity Dxc. The gray dash box in (a) and (c) indicates the cross-section of (Nx + 1)ac  (W + 2a) and
(H + 2a)  (W + 2a), respectively.

launched at the input waveguide marked as the red

line in Fig. 1(d).
It has been suggested in [36] the maximum intensity
enhancement factor is linearly proportional to the Qfactor. Considering the field enhancement factor g in
cavity and the transmissivity T of pump pulse
simultaneously, the incident switching single pulse
energy can be reduced by a factor of g  T [37]. For
Pumping I the pulse width of the pump beam is
restricted to be approximately 10 ps because of the
lifetime in cavity, while for Pumping II the pulse width
can be shortened to 100 fs or even smaller due to the
femtosecond relaxation time of PS [25]. With the

minimum switching intensity of 0.37 GW/cm2 the

calculated incident switching single pulse energy and
the corresponding physical parameters are presented in
Table 1. The switching energy can be further reduced by
setting the pump beam resonating with the low quality
factor frequency, which can decrease the pulse width,
increase the transmissivity, and maintain relatively large
field enhancement factor. Although the single pulse
energy is still in the range of pico-joules far larger than
that of previous reported pure semiconductor PC
nanocavity [19], the switching energy is much reduced
compared with previous reported semiconductor-polymer hybrid PC structures, where the energy of single

Table 1
The calculated incident switching single pulse energy for Pumping I and Pumping II and their corresponding physical parameters.

Pulse width (t)

Pumping cross section (DS)
Transmissivity (T)
Field enhancement factor (g)
Incident switching single pulse energy [(tIminDS)/(Tg)]

Pumping I

Pumping II

10 ps
1.34 mm2
(H + 2a)  (W + 2a)
0.01
1130
4.40 pJ

100 fs
12.49 mm2
(Nx + 1)ac  (W + 2a)
1
1
4.62 pJ

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003

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pulse is in the range of nano-joules [23,28]. It must be

noticed that the total switching time for our hybrid
PCNMs is now not limited by the recombination time of
carriers but by the photon lifetime in cavity, where for the
Q-factor of 104 is only a few picoseconds. This is because
the Kerr nonlinearity is mainly contributed by PS and the
relaxation time of PS is in the femtosecond range. One
direct way to shorten the total switching time is to
decrease the quality factor of the high-Q mode.
4. Conclusion
In summary we have demonstrated the design of Sipolymer hybrid PCNMs for realizing low-power and
ultrafast all-optical switching. Being different from the
previous design strategy for PCNM we extend our
proposed double-heterostructure based scheme from
low-refractive-index material to high-refractive-index
hybrid structure. Quality factors as high as 105 and 104
have been obtained in SOI and Si-polymer hybrid
lattice-modulated double-heterostructure PCNM,
which does not require fine tuning of the hole radius
or exhaustive parameter examination. Due to the
overwhelmingly large Kerr nonlinearity and ultrafast
response speed of polymer the all-optical switching
behavior is investigated by artificially changing the
refractive index of polymer and inspecting the resonant
frequency shift. It is found that large overlap between
electric field energy and polymer material can be
achieved by utilizing the air band edge of the center
cavity region leading to sensitive frequency shift on the
polymer index change. The minimum switching
intensity of only 0.37 GW/cm2 is extracted for our
high-Q hybrid microcavities. Although the incident
switching single pulse energy is still in the range of
pico-joules, our hybrid PCNMs outperform previous
reported semiconductor-polymer hybrid PC microcavities in terms of switching pulse energy and device size.
Because the Kerr nonlinearity is primarily contributed
by polymer, the total switching time is expected to be a
few picoseconds limited by the photon lifetime in cavity
but not by the recombination time of carriers generated
in the semiconductor materials. Our Si-polymer hybrid
structures show great potential in designing integrated
and small-sized all-optical devices or circuits with the
advantages of possessing low-power consumption and
ultrafast speed simultaneously.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Basic
Research Foundation of China under grant no.

2011CB922002 and Knowledge Innovation Program

of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No.
Y1V2013L11).
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[37] For Pumping I the field enhancement factor is approximately
hR
i
estimated by g hR

Dxc
Dxwg

jEy xj2 dx Dxc

, where the denominator

jEy xj2 dx =Dxwg

and numerator stand for the average intensity over the x direction
in the input or output waveguide and the cavity region, respectively. Dxwg and Dxc represent the length of the input or output
waveguide and the cavity, which are indicated as the white solid
arrows in Fig. 8(a). The transmissivity is obtained from Fig. 5(a)
for Pumping I. For Pumping II the transmissivity and field
enhancement factor is approximately taken as 1. The cross
section for Pumping I and Pumping II is indicated as the dash
grey box in Fig. 8(c) and (a), respectively.

Please cite this article in press as: Z.-M. Meng, et al., Design of high-Q silicon-polymer hybrid photonic crystal nanobeam
microcavities for low-power and ultrafast all-optical switching, Photon Nanostruct: Fundam Appl (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.photonics.2013.08.003