Planar Oxide Photonic Materials and Devices: feature issue introduction

Lei Bi,Volker J Sorger,Bethanie Stadler,Reza Khorasaninejad,Bruce Wessels

doi:10.1364/ome.8.003250

Abstract

Oxide materials are widely used in photonic devices. Recently, with the development of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), planar integration of oxide thin film materials and photonic devices has become an actively studied emerging field. In this feature issue, we present 12 papers in the field of planar oxide photonics. Topics include passive and active photonic devices based on oxide materials for applications in a variety of planar integrated photonic devices such as metasurfaces, optical isolators, photodetectors, modulators, light sources and nonlinear photonics.

Highlights

Oxide materials are widely used in bulk optical devices, such as prisms, lenses, polarizers, modulators, lasers and gain mediums, just to name a few
Oxide materials with isotropic optical constants are used as lenses and prisms, such as fused-quartz, titanium dioxide (TiO2) and gadolinium gallium oxide (GGG)
Magnetooptical oxides, a class of oxide materials with unique optical anisotropy, i.e. optical circular birefringence, are used in optical isolators and circulators to provide optical nonreciprocity to optical systems. Nonlinear optical materials such as LiNbO3 and BaB2O4 are used in electro-optic modulators and other nonlinear photonic devices

Summary

Introduction

Oxide materials are widely used in bulk optical devices, such as prisms, lenses, polarizers, modulators, lasers and gain mediums, just to name a few. The unique crystal and electronic band structure of oxide materials enable their wide applications in optical systems. With the development of photonic integrated circuits, an emerging field is to integrate oxide materials in a planar device structure.

Results

Conclusion