Iodine enhanced focused-ion-beam etching of silicon for photonic applications

Abstract

Focused-ion-beam etching of silicon enables fast and versatile fabrication of micro- and nanophotonic devices. However, large optical losses due to crystal damage and ion implantation make the devices impractical when the optical mode is confined near the etched region. These losses are shown to be reduced by the local implantation and etching of silicon waveguides with iodine gas enhancement, followed by baking at 300 °C. The excess optical loss in the silicon waveguides drops from 3500 to 1700 dB/cm when iodine gas is used, and is further reduced to 200 dB/cm after baking at 300 °C. We present elemental and chemical surface analyses supporting that this is caused by the desorption of iodine from the silicon surface. Finally we present a model to extract the absorption coefficient from the measurements.