Abstract
Multi-scale modeling methods are employed to assist in the design of improved organic electro-optic (OEO) materials, including simulating the effects of the interaction of such materials with the electrodes of silicon organic hybrid (SOH) and plasmonic organic hybrid (POH) nanoscopic waveguide devices. Theoretical methods have promoted the evolution of OEO materials from low number density chromophore-polymer guest-host composites and chromophores covalently attached to traditional polymer matrices to custom designed high chromophore number density macromolecular materials with controlled intermolecular interactions and reduced matrix dimensionality. New OEO materials exhibit electrooptic activity of 500-600 pm/V in electrically-poled μm thick films and 90-350 pm/V in nm thick films in SOH and POH devices. The improvement in EO activity together with concentration of RF and optical fields in SOH and POH devices has resulted in a substantial improvement in device performance, including reducing voltage-length performance to 40 V-μm, energy efficiency on the order of a femtojoule/bit, device footprints on the order of 1 μm2 and bandwidths of > 170 GHz for POH devices. Significant advances with respect to device insertion loss have also been achieved.