Abstract

Data communication in silicon photonic interconnects requires efficient and broadband on/off-chip coupling components. Recently, perfectly vertically-emitting grating couplers have been proposed to increase spatial I/O density of the optical link and potentially improve manufacturing costs and ease of optical beam characterization. In this article, adjoint optimization was leveraged in the design of low-loss single (silicon) and dual layer (silicon + silicon nitride) perfectly-vertical grating couplers that are compatible with a scalable silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform for the 65 nm CMOS technology node. In simulation, the best design peaks at −0.52 dB insertion loss with a 1 dB-bandwidth of 24 nm at the 1310 nm datacom wavelength.

Wafer-level testing of inverse-designed and adjoint-inspired vertical grating coupler designs compatible with DUV lithography

Thomas Van Vaerenbergh, Peng Sun, Sean Hooten, Mudit Jain, Quentin Wilmart, Ashkan Seyedi, Zhihong Huang, Marco Fiorentino, and Ray Beausoleil
Opt. Express 29(23) 37021-37036 (2021)

Adjoint optimization of polarization-splitting grating couplers

Peng Sun, Thomas Van Vaerenbergh, Sean Hooten, and Raymond Beausoleil
Opt. Express 31(3) 4884-4898 (2023)

CMOS-compatible high efficiency double-etched apodized waveguide grating coupler

Chao Li, Huijuan Zhang, Mingbin Yu, and G. Q. Lo
Opt. Express 21(7) 7868-7874 (2013)

High-efficiency and wideband interlayer grating couplers in multilayer Si/SiO₂/SiN platform for 3D integration of optical functionalities

Majid Sodagar, Reza Pourabolghasem, Ali A. Eftekhar, and Ali Adibi
Opt. Express 22(14) 16767-16777 (2014)

Adjoint-method-inspired grating couplers for CWDM O-band applications

Peng Sun, Thomas Van Vaerenbergh, Marco Fiorentino, and Raymond Beausoleil
Opt. Express 28(3) 3756-3767 (2020)