Ion implantation in silicon to facilitate testing of photonic circuits

Abstract

In recent years, we have presented results on the development of erasable gratings in silicon to facilitate wafer scale testing of photonics circuits via ion implantation of germanium. Similar technology can be employed to develop a range of optical devices that are reported in this paper. Ion implantation into silicon causes radiation damage resulting in a refractive index increase, and can therefore form the basis of multiple optical devices. We demonstrate the principle of a series of devices for wafers scale testing and have also implemented the ion implantation based refractive index change in integrated photonics devices for device trimming.