Fabrication techniques for low-loss silicon nitride waveguides

Shaw, Michael J.; Guo, Junpeng; Vawter, G.A.; Habermehl, S.; Sullivan, Charles T.

doi:10.1117/12.588828

Cited by 61 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The fabrication challenges posed by this process approach are summarized in Figure 2a (PECVD) allows for crack free SiN thin film deposition, high-Q optical microresonators were only achieved based on low pressure chemical vapor deposited (LPCVD), stoichiometric SiN thin films. The high temperatures during film deposition (∼ 770°C) and for subsequent annealing (up to 1200°C) have been shown to lead to low material absorption losses [16]. But they also lead to highly tensile stressed films (typically > 800 MPa), that are prone to crack formation ( Figure 2a).…”

Section: Problems Of Subtractive Waveguide Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photonic Damascene process for integrated high-Q microresonator based nonlinear photonics

Pfeiffer

Kordts

Brasch

et al. 2016

Optica

318

218

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High confinement, integrated silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides have recently emerged as attractive platform for on-chip nonlinear optical devices. The fabrication of high-Q SiN microresonators with anomalous group velocity dispersion (GVD) has enabled broadband nonlinear optical frequency comb generation. Such frequency combs have been successfully applied in coherent communication and ultrashort pulse generation. However, the reliable fabrication of high confinement waveguides from stoichiometric, high stress SiN remains challenging. Here we present a novel photonic Damascene fabrication process enabling the use of substrate topography for stress control and thin film crack prevention. With close to unity sample yield we fabricate microresonators with 1.35 µm thick waveguides and optical Q factors of 3.7 × 10 6 and demonstrate single temporal dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) based coherent optical frequency comb generation. Our newly developed process is interesting also for other material platforms, photonic integration and mid infrared Kerr comb generation.

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Section: Problems Of Subtractive Waveguide Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photonic Damascene process for integrated high-Q microresonator based nonlinear photonics

Pfeiffer

Kordts

Brasch

et al. 2016

Optica

318

218

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Although silicon nitride is not useful for making electrically active devices, its high refractive index, compared to silicon dioxide, still allows for high confinement sub-micron waveguides. More importantly, silicon nitride waveguides have been demonstrated with 0.1dB/cm propagation loss around λ = 1.55μm (in loosely confined [Shaw et al 2005] or multimode ] waveguides). This represents approximately an order of magnitude lower propagation loss compared to crystalline silicon waveguides, making it an ideal candidate for waveguides using a deposited material.…”

Section: Materials For Silicon Photonicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photonic network-on-chip architectures using multilayer deposited silicon materials for high-performance chip multiprocessors

Biberman

Preston

Hendry

et al. 2011

J. Emerg. Technol. Comput. Syst.

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Integrated photonics has been slated as a revolutionary technology with the potential to mitigate the many challenges associated with on-and off-chip electrical interconnection networks. To date, all proposed chipscale photonic interconnects have been based on the crystalline silicon platform for CMOS-compatible fabrication. However, maintaining CMOS compatibility does not preclude the use of other CMOS-compatible silicon materials such as silicon nitride and polycrystalline silicon. In this work, we investigate utilizing devices based on these deposited materials to design photonic networks with multiple layers of photonic devices. We apply rigorous device optimization and insertion loss analysis on various network architectures, demonstrating that multilayer photonic networks can exhibit dramatically lower total insertion loss, enabling unprecedented bandwidth scalability. We show that significant improvements in waveguide propagation and waveguide crossing insertion losses resulting from using these materials enables the realization of topologies that were previously not feasible using only the single-layer crystalline silicon approaches.

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“…Lower losses can be achieved using more exotic fabrication techniques such as with etchless silicon waveguides that have been shown to have losses of 0.3 dB/cm [28]. The freedom of parameter specification also enables the investigation of waveguides composed of nonsilicon materials such as silica fiber (losses on the order of tenths of a dB per kilometer) and silicon-nitride (losses of 0.1 dB/cm, [29]). …”

Section: A Static Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical-Layer Modeling and System-Level Design of Chip-Scale Photonic Interconnection Networks

Chan

Hendry

Bergman

et al. 2011

IEEE Trans. Comput.-Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst.

107

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Abstract-Photonic technology is becoming an increasingly attractive solution to the problems facing today's electronic chip-scale interconnection networks. Recent progress in silicon photonics research has enabled the demonstration of all the necessary optical building blocks for creating extremely highbandwidth density and energy-efficient links for on-chip and off-chip communications. From the feasibility and architecture perspective however, photonics represents a dramatic paradigm shift from traditional electronic network designs due to fundamental differences in how electronics and photonics function and behave. As a result of these differences, new modeling and analysis methods must be employed in order to properly realize a functional photonic chip-scale interconnect design. In this paper, we present a methodology for characterizing and modeling fundamental photonic building blocks which can subsequently be combined to form full photonic network architectures. We also describe a set of tools which can be utilized to assess the physical-layer and system-level performance properties of a photonic network. The models and tools are integrated in a novel open-source design and simulation environment. We present a case study of two different photonic networks-on-chip to demonstrate how our improved understanding and modeling of the physical-layer details of photonic communications can be used to better understand the system-level performance impact.Index Terms-Optical communications, optical crosstalk, optical losses, photonic interconnection networks, simulation software, system analysis and design.

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Fabrication techniques for low-loss silicon nitride waveguides

Cited by 61 publications

References 9 publications

Photonic Damascene process for integrated high-Q microresonator based nonlinear photonics

Photonic Damascene process for integrated high-Q microresonator based nonlinear photonics

Photonic network-on-chip architectures using multilayer deposited silicon materials for high-performance chip multiprocessors

Physical-Layer Modeling and System-Level Design of Chip-Scale Photonic Interconnection Networks

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