Slot-Waveguide Silicon Nitride Organic Hybrid Distributed Feedback Laser

Abstract

One of the major barriers for a widespread commercial uptake of silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits for cost-sensitive applications is the lack of low-cost monolithically integrated laser light sources directly emitting into single-mode waveguides. In this work, we demonstrate an optically pumped organic solid-state slot-waveguide distributed feedback laser designed for a silicon nitride organic hybrid photonic platform. Pulsed optical excitation of the gain medium is achieved by a 450 nm laser diode. The optical feedback for lasing is based on a second-order laterally coupled Bragg grating with a slot-waveguide core. Optimized material gain properties of the organic dye together with the increased modal gain of the laser mode arising from the improved overlap of the slot-waveguide geometry with the gain material enable single-mode lasing at a wavelength of 600 nm. The straightforward integration and operation with a blue laser diode leads to a cost-effective coherent light source for photonic integrated devices.

Lasing in Si3N4-organic hybrid (SiNOH) waveguides

“…However, this did not represent a practical limitation in our experimentswe could test the SiNOH devices for several hours, i.e., with more than 100 000 pump pulses, while still retaining at least 50% of the initial emission power. These findings are in line with recently published results on similar devices [28] and should permit operation of SiNOH lasers in disposable point-of-care devices. Note that the pump pulse duration used in our experiments amounts to 20 ns and is thus significantly longer than the fluorescence lifetime of the dyes, which is approximately 5 ns [41].…”

“…For the devices shown in this work, we use first-order Bragg gratings with a period of approximately 170 nm, which requires comparatively high lithography resolution. It has recently been demonstrated that SiNOH DFB lasers can also be realized with second-order gratings [27,28], having grating periods of more than 350 nm. Such structures are amenable to high-throughput mass fabrication using, e.g., 248 nm deep-UV lithography.…”

“…In combination with simple camera read-out schemes, our concept shows a route towards disposable sensor chips for highly multiplexed detection of a wide range of analytes in point-of-care diagnostics. During the preparation of this manuscript, the concept of SiNOH lasers [25,26] was independently demonstrated by another group [27,28] using second-order DFB structures that are amenable to production with relaxed lithography resolution requirements. These experiments prove the viability of the concept and demonstrate its transferability to different photonic integration platforms.…”

10 nm SiO2 TM Slot Mode in Laterally Mismatched Asymmetric Fin-Waveguides

“…PhCs can be designed to exhibit a photonic bandgap (PBG) [10,11], low or zero group velocity slow-light [12][13][14][15], low effective volume (V eff ) confinement with high Q-factor [16][17][18], increased Purcell effect [19,20], orbital angular momentum [21], and transverse spin angular momentum [22]. There have been several demonstrations of PhC slot-waveguides [23,24] which have relied on slot widths >100 nm. There has been no demonstration of a PhC transverse-electric (TE) to transverse-magnetic (TM) polarization converter on an SOI platform.…”

Photonic Crystal Polymeric Thin-Film Dye-Lasers for Attachable Strain Sensors

“…Various dyes have been used for realizing fluidic or solid dye-lasers [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] by dissolving in organic solvents or doping in polymers. Compared with the fluidic dye-lasers, solid dye-lasers [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ] show more integration compatibilities with different optical platforms and photonic chips. To reduce the threshold and minimize the device footprint of this kind of dye-laser, the dye-doped polymer usually combines with the optical cavities [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ] based on different materials.…”