Nanomembrane enabled nanophotonic devices

Mathew J. Zablocki; Ahmed S. Sharkawy; Ozgenc Ebil; Dennis W. Prather

doi:10.1117/12.842670

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16 February 2010 Nanomembrane enabled nanophotonic devices

Mathew J. Zablocki, Ahmed S. Sharkawy, Ozgenc Ebil, Dennis W. Prather

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Proceedings Volume 7606, Silicon Photonics V; 76060V (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.842670
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2010, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Nanomembranes (NM) are crystalline semiconductor materials (Si, GaAs, SiGe, etc) that have been released from their substrates and redeposited on foreign, flexible or flat substrates enabling the best features of both materials. Although they are in fact crystalline in nature and possess the electronic/photonic properties of bulk material, they are flexible, deformable, and conformable. An obvious choice is silicon-on-insulator (SOI). SOI provides, beyond its application in the Si industry, the ultimate platform for exploring novel science and technological advancements in this class of nanomaterial. In SOI, a SiO2 layer is interspersed between a thin crystalline top Si layer and the bottom Si wafer; the ability to etch this buried oxide selectively creates the nanomembranes. When released from the oxide, this layer can form extremely flexible strain-engineered thin nanomembranes with thicknesses from several hundred nanometers to less than 10 nm, and in various shapes. Photonic devices originally structured in an SOI substrate can now be transferred and stacked on new substrates, rigid and flexible, to increase optical interconnect densities.

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Mathew J. Zablocki, Ahmed S. Sharkawy, Ozgenc Ebil, and Dennis W. Prather "Nanomembrane enabled nanophotonic devices", Proc. SPIE 7606, Silicon Photonics V, 76060V (16 February 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.842670

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