Novel Material-based Heterogeneous-integrated Electro-Optic Modulators in Silicon Photonics
Open AccessThe search for novel materials in electro-optic modulation to engineer unprecedented performance metrics is an active research field in recent years. Numerous material classes have been sought to enhance optical modulator performance. A key challenge encountered in heterogeneously integrating novel materials, such as low-dimensional thin film (0.3 to 10 nm) in Silicon (Si) photonics platforms, is compatibility with the mature Si process flow; i.e. complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility. However, the low-dimensionality of thin-film materials usually exhibit weak light-matter interaction in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) leading to limited device performance. In this dissertation, I discuss several integrated thin-film material based photonic and plasmonic modulators from theory and analytical numerical analysis to demonstration via fabrication and measurements.Indium tin oxide (ITO), belonging to the class of transparent conductive oxides, is a material extensively adopted in high-tech industry; such as in touchscreen displays of smartphones or contacts for solar cells. Recently, ITO has been explored for electro-optic modulation using its free-carrier dispersive effect enabling unity-strong index modulation. Here, I demonstrate several novel electro-optic modulators by heterogeneously integrating ITO thin-films on Si photonics employing both photonic and plasmonic configurations, achieving CMOS compatible on-chip devices with enhanced light-matter interaction exemplified by their unprecedented performances in terms of key figures of merits, such as the first demonstration of a GHz-fast broadband modulator. These demonstrations pave the way for a plethora of novel applications from photonic neuromorphic computing and beam steering to robust state of the art data communication networks on chip.
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