Abstract: Photonic modulator is the core component of optical fiber communication system, which mainly modulates the optical signal and realizes the conversion of the signal from the electrical domain to the optical domain. With the development of silicon based semiconductor technology, silicon based photonic modulator has gradually become the mainstream silicon photonic devices, and the realization of gigahertz bandwidth modulator based on silicon technology has laid a foundation for the development of silicon photonics. At present, the modulation speed of silicon-based photonic modulator has exceeded 50 GHz, which basically meets the bandwidth requirements of modulation format. However, silicon-based photonic modulators with low driving voltage and low insertion loss are still a field worthy of research. More and more research institutions have joined the research of silicon-based photonic modulators and have made great progress. This paper mainly analyzes the research progress of silicon-based photonic modulators at home and abroad, discusses the research status of silicon-based photonic modulators based on SOI materials, SiGe materials, Ge materials, ferroelectric materials, organic photoelectric materials, Ⅲ-Ⅴ group materials and graphene materials, and compares and analyzes the performance of relevant modulators. It provides ideas for further research and development of photonic modulator with high speed and low loss in the future.