A merged photonic crystal slot waveguide embedded in ALD-TiO₂.

We demonstrate the concept of a merged nanoscale photonic crystal slot waveguide that acts as a bandpass filter in the near infrared region of the spectrum. The device is based on the integration of a photonic crystal cavity in a slot waveguide on a silicon on insulator substrate. The device is further embedded in amorphous titanium dioxide using atomic layer deposition, which allows to reduce two-photon absorption losses and creates the possibility to combine nonlinear guided-wave optics resulting from the strong field confinement in the slot region with slow light effects in the photonic crystal cavity. Our approach is fully compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology and opens up new perspectives for the integration of all-optical signal processing functionalities in hybrid silicon nanophotonics platforms.