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We report on the hybrid integration of silicon-on-insulator slot waveguides with organic electro-optic materials. We investigate and compare a polymer composite, a dendron-based material, and a binary-chromophore organic glass (BCOG). A record-high in-device electro-optic coefficient of 230 pm/V is found for the BCOG approach resulting in silicon-organic hybrid Mach-Zehnder modulators that feature low $U_{\pi }L$ -products of down to 0.52 Vmm and support data rates of up to 40 Gbit/s.

We give an overview on our recent achievements in the field of SOH integration, covering in-device electro-optic coefficients r 33 in excess of 200 pm/V, highly efficient Mach-Zehnder modulators, IQ modulators, and modulator-based frequency comb generators

Silicon photonics offers tremendous potential for inexpensive high-yield photonic-electronic integration by enabling fabless fabrication and joint processing of photonic and electronic circuitry. Silicon as an optical material, however, falls short of certain properties that are indispensable for high-performance devices. In particular, bulk silicon does not feature any second-order optical nonlinearity due to crystal symmetry, thereby making efficient electro-optic modulators challenging. These deficiencies can be overcome by silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) integration, which combines silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides with electro-optic organic materials. We give an overview on our recent progress in the field of SOH modulators, covering highly efficient devices with energy consumptions of a few femtojoule per bit and modulator-based frequency comb generators that enable WDM data transmission at terabit/s data rates.

We report on record-high electro-optic coefficients of up to 230 pm/V in silicon slot waveguide modulators. The modulators allow for low drive voltage at 40 Gbit/s at a device length of only 250 µm.