Low-loss photonic wires and compact ring resonators in silicon-on-insulator

Abstract

We fabricated single-mode photonic wires, nanophotonic waveguides confining light by total internal reflection. The structures are defined in silicon-on-insulator using 248nm deep UV lithography, a widely adopted technology for CMOS applications. The crystalline silicon core has a thickness of 220nm and a width of up to 600nm. A 1um thick silica layer serves as the lower cladding. We measured the loss of straight waveguides using the Fabry-Perot interference spectrum of the cleaved samples. A 500nm wide waveguide has a loss as low as 2.4dB/cm at 1550nm wavelength. We measured 90 degree bends to have excess losses of about 1dB. Mirror bends perform comparably. We fabricated symmetrically coupled ring and racetrack resonators with small radius. Q-factors higher than 3000 are achieved, leading to low add-drop crosstalk, high finesse and low at-resonance insertion loss. By fitting the theoretical model to the experimental results, we extracted parameters such as the coupling ratio, cavity loss and group index. We analyzed the fabrication tolerances allowed for these resonators to be suitable as a building block for WDM filtering components. The allowed deviation on the waveguide widths and gaps for the coupling ratio to be within specification are within the possibilities of the fabrication method. However, a method to tightly control the optical cavity length is needed as the ring's group index is highly dependent on waveguide width.