Measured radiation sensitivity of silica-on-silicon and silicon-on-insulator micro-photonic devices for potential space application

Abstract

Silica on Silicon (SoS) and Silicon on insulator (SOI) fabrication technologies are now yielding efficient photonic devices that have potential uses (e.g. routing and switching) in multigigabit optical backplane interconnect applications. The ever increasing demands for higher speed data handling and greater throughput on board both operational and experimental satellites necessitate an examination of these technologies for their robustness and performance in a space environment. One of the main environmental stressors on electronic and photonic components is the incident radiation flux. This paper reports results from the experimental testing of two classes of photonic devices; namely a SoS arrayed waveguide grating (AWG), and a SOI ring resonator. For a total ionizing dose of 300 kRad Co60 gamma irradiation, the SOI ring resonator showed induced spectral shifts as lower than 0.4 pm/kRad, and the SoS AWG showed a maximum shift of 0.03 pm/kRad in one channel. The relatively low AWG radiation sensitivity tempt us to say that these devices could be considered radiation hard for the telecom CL wavelength band (1550 nm) in which these measurements were made.