Fundamental Scaling Laws in Nanophotonics
The success of information technology has clearly demonstrated that miniaturization often leads to unprecedented performance, and unanticipated applications. This hypothesis of "smaller is better" has motivated optical engineers to build various nanophotonic devices, although an understanding leading to fundamental scaling behavior for this new class of devices is missing. Here we analyze scaling laws for optoelectronic devices operating at micro and nanometer length scale. We show that optoelectronic device performance scales non monotonically with device length due to the various device tradeoffs, and analyze how both optical and electrical constrains influence device power consumption and operating speed. Specifically, we investigate the direct influence of scaling on the performance of four classes of photonic devices, namely laser sources, electro optic modulators, photodetectors, and all optical switches based on three types of optical resonators; microring, Fabry Perot cavity, and plasmonic metal nanoparticle. Results show that while microrings and Fabry Perot cavities can outperform plasmonic cavities at larger length scales, they stop working when the device length drops below 100 nanometers, due to insufficient functionality such as feedback (laser) index modulation (modulator) absorption (detector) or field density (optical switch) Our results provide a detailed understanding of the limits of nanophotonics, towards establishing an opto electronics roadmap, akin to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors.
Scientific reports