Passive Photonic Integrated Circuits Elements Fabricated on a Silicon Nitride Platform

Abstract

The fabrication processes for silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits evolved from microelectronics components technology—basic processes have common roots and can be executed using the same type of equipment. In comparison to that of electronics components, passive photonic structures require fewer manufacturing steps and fabricated elements have larger critical dimensions. In this work, we present and discuss our first results on design and development of fundamental building blocks for silicon nitride integrated photonic platform. The scope of the work covers the full design and manufacturing chain, from numerical simulations of optical elements, design, and fabrication of the test structures to optical characterization and analysis the results. In particular, technological processes were developed and evaluated for fabrication of the waveguides (WGs), multimode interferometers (MMIs), and arrayed waveguide gratings (AWGs), which confirmed the potential of the technology and correctness of the proposed approach.

Silicon Nitride Building Blocks in the Visible Range of the Spectrum

“…Technologies developed in ref. [43], [44] and [45] show multimode behavior and they all have a high confinement factor, with values of 91.3 %, 69.1 %, and 75.3 % respectively; losses ranging from 0.98 dB/cm up to 1.6 dB/cm and a bending radius from 80 µm up to 400 µm. These propagation losses are 2.1-3.7 times lower than the ones of the platform presented in this paper, but the footprint is bigger, having bending radius as big as 1.2 to 6.7 times the radius of the studied technology.…”

Integration of Plasmonic Structures in Photonic Waveguides Enables Novel Electromagnetic Functionalities in Photonic Circuits

“…The key features of the all-optical solution include the ability to parallelize optical carriers through spectral multiplexing and specific information encodings. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) [1][2][3] have been developed to generate complete optical systems and to simplify the use of different optical functions from source to modulation and signal detection. Leveraging manufacturing techniques inspired by microelectronics, planar waveguide circuits have achieved two complementary objectives: (1) to control the propagation of the optical signal in a 2D system with very low losses and (2) to facilitate the serial or parallel association of several functions without the use of spatial optical elements.…”

“…Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) [1][2][3] have been developed to generate complete optical systems and to simplify the use of different optical functions from source to modulation and signal detection. Leveraging manufacturing techniques inspired by microelectronics, planar waveguide circuits have achieved two complementary objectives: (1) to control the propagation of the optical signal in a 2D system with very low losses and (2) to facilitate the serial or parallel association of several functions without the use of spatial optical elements. Guided planar optics enables the compact integration of optical elements whose lateral dimension is on the order of the wavelength in the material.…”

Sol-Gel Derived Silica-Titania Waveguide Films for Applications in Evanescent Wave Sensors—Comprehensive Study

“…Waveguide layers are material platforms based on which integrated optics technologies are developed. Currently, the main areas of application of integrated optics are: data centers [ 3 , 4 ], optical telecommunication [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ], and evanescent wave sensors [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. The emerging area of application for integrated optics involves optical computing [ 17 ], and quantum photonics [ 18 , 19 ].…”

“…By combining both material platforms having high refractive indexes, using CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) processes, we can fabricate fully functional processing systems of optical signals with high integration scale [ 6 , 23 ]. Another material platform for applications in the Vis-NIR spectral range, including sensor applications in the Vis range, is silicon nitride Si 3 N 4 [ 15 , 24 ]. On the basis of Si 3 N 4 and SiO 2 the TriPlex material platform was developed [ 25 , 26 ].…”