Silicon carbide (SiC) is considered a promising platform for linear and nonlinear photonics due to its large band gap, large refractive index, low thermo-optic coefficient, large Kerr nonlinearity, and good mechanical stability. We evaluate amorphous SiC (a-SiC) deposited on an insulator, using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, as a nonlinear optical material. Deposited films possess a band gap of 2.3 eV and refractive index of 2.45 at a wavelength of 1550 nm. Ring resonators with intrinsic quality factor as high as 1.6 × 105 are demonstrated. Waveguides with loss as low as 3 dB/cm enable low loss linear integrated photonics. The Kerr nonlinearity of a-SiC around 1550 nm is measured to be 4.8 × 10–14 cm2/W1 order of magnitude higher than previous results measured for both crystalline and amorphous SiC. Nonlinear loss characterization shows that two-photon absorption is absent. The three-photon absorption coefficient is characterized to be ∼0.01 cm3/GW2. The strong Kerr nonlinearity makes a-SiC a great platform for CMOS-compatible nonlinear photonics.

GeSbS ridge waveguides have recently been demonstrated as a promising mid – infrared platform for integrated waveguide – based chemical sensing and photodetection. To date, their nonlinear optical properties remain relatively unexplored. In this paper, we characterize the nonlinear optical properties of GeSbS glasses, and show negligible nonlinear losses at 1.55 μm. Using self – phase modulation experiments, we characterize a waveguide nonlinear parameter of 7 W−1/m and nonlinear refractive index of 3.71 × 10−18 m2/W. GeSbS waveguides are used to generate supercontinuum from 1280 nm to 2120 nm at the −30 dB level. The spectrum expands along the red shifted side of the spectrum faster than on the blue shifted side, facilitated by cascaded stimulated Raman scattering arising from the large Raman gain of chalcogenides. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic measurements show that these glasses are optically transparent up to 25 μm, making them useful for short – wave to long – wave infrared applications in both linear and nonlinear optics.

The formation of optical solitons arises from the simultaneous presence of dispersive and nonlinear properties within a propagation medium. Chip-scale devices that support optical solitons harness high field confinement and flexibility in dispersion engineering for significantly smaller footprints and lower operating powers compared to fiber-based equivalents. High-order solitons evolve periodically as they propagate and experience a temporal narrowing at the start of each soliton period. This phenomenon allows strong temporal compression of optical pulses to be achieved. In this paper, soliton-effect temporal compression of optical pulses is demonstrated on a CMOS-compatible ultra-silicon-rich nitride (USRN) waveguide. We achieve 8.7× compression of 2 ps optical pulses using a low pulse energy of ∼16 pJ, representing the largest demonstrated compression on an integrated photonic waveguide to date. The strong temporal compression is confirmed by numerical calculations of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation to be attributed to the USRN waveguide’s large nonlinearity and negligible two-photon absorption at 1550 nm.

A broadband green light source was demonstrated using a tandem-poled lithium niobate (TPLN) crystal. The measured wavelength and temperature bandwidth were 6.5 nm and 100 °C, respectively, spectral bandwidth was 36 times broader than the periodically poled case. Although the conversion efficiency was smaller than in the periodic case, the TPLN device had a good figure of merit owing to the extremely large bandwidth for wavelength and temperature. The developed broadband green light source exhibited speckle noise approximately one-seventh of that in the conventional approach for a laser projection display.

The dispersive nonlinear refractive index of ultra-silicon-rich nitride, and its two-photon and three-photon absorption coefficients are measured in the wavelength range between 0.8 µm–1.6 µm, covering the O- to L – telecommunications bands. In the two-photon absorption range, the measured nonlinear coefficients are compared to theoretically calculated values with a simple parabolic band structure. Two-photon absorption is observed to exist only at wavelengths lower than 1.2 μm. The criterion for all-optical switching through the material is investigated and it is shown that ultra-silicon-rich nitride is a good material in the three-photon absorption region, which spans the entire O- to L- telecommunications bands.