We present a novel photonic wire-to-slot waveguide coupler in SOI. The phase matching between a wire and slot mode is achieved using a mode transformer. The architecture consists of a balanced 50/50 power splitter and a tunable phase matched taper combiner forming a slot waveguide. We show a theoretical wire-to-slot coupling efficiency of 99 % is achievable and experimentally, we demonstrate a coupling efficiency of 99 % in the 1550 nm band. Based on the coupling scheme, we also show excitation of a slot mode in a slotted ring resonator and verified the excitation through the thermo-optic response of the rings. We show a nearly athermal behaviour of a PMMA filled slot ring with a thermo-optic response of 12.8 pm/°C compare to 43.5 pm/°C for an air clad slot waveguide.