Abstract
Low loss silicon waveguides are the key to the realization of high performance photonic integrated
circuits. In this paper, fabrication, characterization and loss analysis of silicon nanowaveguides are presented.
Silicon nanowaveguides are fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers with 0.13 μm complementary
metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. To reduce the propagation loss, both photolithography and etching
processes are optimized to make the waveguide sidewalls smooth. Propagation losses of 2.4 ± 0.2 and 0.59
± 0.32 dB/cm are obtained at 1550 nm wavelength for TE and TM modes, respectively. A theoretical
method is used to estimate the propagation losses for TE and TM modes. Scattering losses from both sidewalls and
top/bottom surface are considered. The calculated results show that loss comes from sidewall roughness is the main
source of propagation loss for TE mode while for TM mode, losses from both sidewall and top/bottom surface contribute
comparably to the total propagation loss. The theoretically estimated propagation loss agrees well with the measured
results.
© 2014 IEEE
PDF Article
More Like This
Cited By
You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.
Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription