We demonstrate 5 dB net gain in an erbium-doped tellurium-oxide-coated silicon nitride waveguide. The amplifier design leverages the high refractive index and high gain in erbium-doped tellurite glass as well as the ultra-low losses and mature, reliable, and low-cost fabrication methods of silicon nitride waveguide technology. We show that the waveguide platform demonstrates low background propagation losses of 0.25 dB/cm based on a ring resonator device with a Q factor of 1.3 × 10 6 at 1640 nm. We measure 5 dB peak net gain at 1558 nm and > 3    dB of net gain across the C band in a 6.7 cm long waveguide for 35 mW of launched 1470 nm pump power. Gain per unit length of 1.7 and 1.4 dB/cm is measured in a 2.2 cm long waveguide for 970 and 1470 nm pump wavelengths, respectively. Amplifier simulations predict that > 10    dB gain can be achieved across the C band simply by optimizing waveguide length and fiber-chip coupling. These results demonstrate a promising approach for the monolithic integration of compact erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers on silicon nitride chips and within silicon-based photonic integrated circuits.

We report on the design and performance of high-Q integrated optical micro-trench cavities on silicon. The microcavities are co-integrated with silicon nitride bus waveguides and fabricated using wafer-scale silicon-photonics-compatible processing steps. The amorphous aluminum oxide resonator material is deposited via sputtering in a single straightforward post-processing step. We examine the theoretical and experimental optical properties of the aluminum oxide micro-trench cavities for different bend radii, film thicknesses and near-infrared wavelengths and demonstrate experimental Q factors of > 10. We propose that this high-Q micro-trench cavity design can be applied to incorporate a wide variety of novel microcavity materials, including rare-earth-doped films for microlasers, into wafer-scale silicon photonics platforms.

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In this work, we present on optical gain and lasing in an ultra-compact thulium-silicon hybrid microdisk resonator emits around 1.9 µm with an internal slope efficiency of 60% and > 1 mW on-chip output power.