Integrated chalcogenide waveguide resonators for mid-IR sensing: leveraging material properties to meet fabrication challenges

Abstract

In this paper, attributes of chalcogenide glass (ChG) based integrated devices are discussed in detail, including origins of optical loss and processing steps used to reduce their contributions to optical component performance. Specifically, efforts to reduce loss and tailor optical characteristics of planar devices utilizing solution-based glass processing and thermal reflow techniques are presented and their results quantified. Post-fabrication trimming techniques based on the intrinsic photosensitivity of the chalcogenide glass are exploited to compensate for fabrication imperfections of ring resonators. Process parameters and implications on enhancement of device fabrication flexibility are presented.

The first decade of coupled resonator optical waveguides: bringing slow light to applications

“…Moreover, Δn and the shape of the waveguide affect also the effective area A eff of the propagating mode that, together with the nonlinear refractive index n 2 of the materials, determines the nonlinear performance of the platform [99,100]. Finally, specific materials with particular features can be employed to enable techniques for optimization and reconfiguration of the CROW response or to improve the performances [101,102], as discussed in detail in Sect. 5.…”

Nonlinear Group IV photonics based on silicon and germanium: from near-infrared to mid-infrared

“…Chalcogenide glasses are actively investigated as photonic materials [147][148][149] and exhibit a wide transparency window in the near-and mid-IR. For example, As 2 S 3 and As 2 Se 3 have bandgap energies around 2.26 eV [150,151] and 1.77 eV [152], and they are transparent up to 12 and 15 µm [153], respectively.…”

Integrated photonics for infrared spectroscopic sensing

“…These polycrystalline chalcogenides can be readily deposited via chemical bath deposition [52,53] or thermal evaporation, facilitating monolithic integration of active mid-IR photonic devices on common semiconductor or dielectric substrates [54][55][56]. Our previous work has developed deposition and processing of these chalcogenide materials and fabrication protocols of photonic devices operating at near-IR telecommunication wave bands on silicon as well as unconventional substrates such as polymers [57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68]. In this paper, we present mid-IR photonic integration based on chalcogenide materials as well as sensing applications of the chip-scale mid-IR photonic platform.…”