Flexible silicon nitride photonic integrated circuit embedded in polymer handle

Abstract

In this paper, we present a hybrid process to make a flexible photonic circuit. The photonic circuit is fabricated on a Silicon substrate with PECVD Silicon Nitride (SiN) as a waveguide layer on an oxide layer. The SiN waveguide circuit is fabricated using conventional lithography and dry etching followed by Si substrate thinned down to 10micrometer. The thin-film photonic circuit integrity after wafer-thinning and layer transfer is characterized by the waveguide performance, grating coupler efficiency and ring resonator performance. We observe no degradation in device and circuit performance. We present detailed process flow, SiN-to-PDMS embedding process and detailed device characterization.