On-chip spectrometer operating in the mid-infrared (MIR) regime (λ = 2 – 14 μm) enables the miniaturization of a chemical sensing platform that identifies compounds based on their unique molecular fingerprints. Germanium-on-Silicon (Ge-on- Si) material system is a suitable candidate for its transparency in the MIR spectrum and compatibility with silicon processing. As chemical sensing is conducted by having the mode evanescent field interacting with the analyte, the design of Ge-on-Si waveguide for a compact footprint (small bending radius) and large evanescent field coverage is necessary. However, the bending radius of the Ge-on-Si waveguide is limited to hundreds of micrometers due to the low refractive index contrast between germanium and silicon. In this work, we demonstrate a 3 μm thick Ge-on-Si waveguide, with ~89° sidewall angles and a high gap aspect ratio of 10 (resolvable gaps of 300 nm). Different types of Ge-on-Si devices are fabricated including in-plane distributed Bragg grating (DBR) structures, cascaded Fabry-Perot resonators, and polarization splitters. We show that over-etching the Si lower cladding is able to reduce bending loss by ~10x, allowing us to decrease the bending radius to ~50 μm. Designs of 32 waveguide geometries for single mode propagation from 5.5 μm to 11 μm are presented, each of which is integrated with grating couplers operating at specific peak wavelengths. Our measurements show high consistency between the simulated and measured peak wavelengths of the grating couplers, with an inter-chip standard deviation of σλ ⁄ λpeak <1%
Aluminum nitride (AlN) is a promising photonics material contributed by its wide transparency window and remarkable nonlinear optical property. Moreover, its nonlinear effect can be further enhanced by doping Scandium (Sc). Such nonlinear optical property brings potential for high efficiency in nonlinear optical generation processes, such as 2nd harmonic generation and frequency comb generation. Although the nonlinear optical property of Sc-doped AlN looks promising, its waveguide is facing challenge on loss reduction. In this work, we report Sc-doped AlN photonic integrated circuit with reduced waveguide loss of 6 dB/cm around 1550 nm. The waveguide has Sc doping concentration of 10%. Its etching process is tailored through a design of experiment (DoE) approach to achieve smooth surface. An annealing process is also applied to patterned waveguide for optical loss reduction. A loaded Q of 1.41×104 has also been reported from microring resonator on the same wafer. The reported result paves the way towards low-loss Sc-doped AlN for photonic integrated circuits.
SF6 gas sensor is developed to measure SF6 gas at different concentrations mixed with N2 based on mid-IR absorption of SF6 at a wavelength of ~10.6 μm. An optical bandpass filter of ~10.6 μm is put in front of a thermal emitter source to allow light of this wavelength to pass through. A CMOS compatible pyroelectric detector is put on the other end of the gas channel to measure the voltage change due to presence of SF6 gas. Here, we use AlN-based and 12% ScAlN-based pyroelectric detectors respectively. The results show for 100% SF6 gas sensing, 12% ScAlN-based pyroelectric detector gives ~73% higher response compared to when using AlN-based pyroelectric detector. The voltage drop between reference N2 gas and different SF6 gas concentrations is also higher (up to 2x) when using 12% ScAlN-based pyroelectric detector. Based on the measured SF6 gas responses, we try to estimate the lower limit of detection of our gas sensors when using AlN- and ScAlN- based pyroelectric detectors respectively. Response times taken for both detectors to detect SF6 concentrations are measured to be ~6.26 s for AlN-based pyroelectric detector and ~1.99 s for 12% ScAlNbased pyroelectric detector. Finally, both pyroelectric detectors’ electrical responses across different frequencies are measured and their 3-dB frequency cutoffs are extracted to be ~13.5 Hz and ~12.6 Hz for AlN- and 12% ScAlN- based pyroelectric detector respectively. The results provide more understanding on characteristics of pyroelectric detectors in SF6 greenhouse gas sensing based on mid-IR absorption.
We develop H2 gas sensors based on CMOS compatible 20% ScAlN-based pyroelectric detectors fabricated in-house. Leveraging on the high thermal conductivity of H2, ScAlN-based pyroelectric detector is used in the H2 sensor for H2 to conduct away thermal energy received by the detector, resulting in a drop in signal received by the detector, thereby leading to different voltage signals measured for different H2 gas concentrations. The higher the H2 gas concentration, the lower the voltage measured as more thermal energy is conducted away from the detector. We successfully demonstrate H2 gas sensing with the signal received by the pyroelectric detector at concentration ranging from 400 ppm to 1% H2 concentration. The gases are cycled at 2-minute intervals between different concentrations of H2, using N2 as the reference gas. Our measurements show H2 sensing down to 400 ppm gas concentration with response time ranging from ~3-7 s. In addition, a linear relationship is also observed between the measured output signal from the H2 gas sensor and the H2 gas concentration flowing across the pyroelectric detector. The results show promise in using CMOS compatible 20% ScAlN-based pyroelectric detectors for development of thermal conductivity H2 gas sensor in H2 leakage sensing to increase confidence towards adoption of H2 as a clean energy as we move towards a sustainable society.
We demonstrate a system-level low-power contactless button using MEMS ScAlN-based pyroelectric detector. As pyroelectric detectors can sense instantaneous temperature change, the human finger can act as a thermal source to activate the button. Using our in-house fabricated ScAlN-based pyroelectric detector which does not require any IR source, we package it into a contactless button system designed with electrical read-out circuits and signal processing. This contactless button system could detect the presence of a finger at a center distance measured up to ~4 cm away, ~2 cm radius circle area, suitable for application as contactless elevator button. Our contactless button system using ScAlN-based pyroelectric effect is characterized, tested and compared with a commercial contactless button. The power consumed is measured ~3.5× lower than that of commercial contactless button. The results obtained provide a potential solution towards energy efficient low-power contactless button system.
Microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based thermal emitter is a key component in an optical sensor to provide broadband emission at mid-infrared wavelengths, where a lot of molecules have their unique absorption profile. However, the thermal emission from a MEMS emitter is typically fixed at a specific spatial coordinate. In this work, a MEMS thermal emitter with piezoelectric actuation to realize active tuning is demonstrated. Thermal emission comes from a doped silicon layer acting as a resistive heater. Piezoelectric actuation is enabled by an aluminum nitride layer on a designed cantilever. The devices are fabricated on a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible process line. The fabricated thermal emitter at the tip of the cantilever generates broadband MIR thermal emission with spectrum peaked around 10 μm wavelength, and piezoelectric actuation with a displacement of more than 20 μm. The work paves the way towards self-adaptable MEMS directional emitter for various applications including chemical/gas sensing.
A demonstration of an on-chip CO2 gas sensor is reported. It is constructed by the integration of a MEMS-based thermal emitter, a scandium-doped aluminum nitride (ScAlN) based pyroelectric detector, and a sensing channel built on Si substrate. The integrated sensor has a small footprint of 13mm × 3mm (L×W), achieved by the replacement of bulky bench-top mid-IR source and detectors with MEMS-based thermal emitter and ScAlN-based pyroelectric detector, with their footprints occupying 3.15 mm × 3 mm and 3.45 mm × 3 mm, respectively. In addition, the performance of the integrated sensor in detecting CO2 of various concentrations in N2 ambient is also studied. The results indicate that the pyroelectric detector responds linearly to the CO2 concentration. The integration of MEMS emitter, thermal pathway substrate, and pyroelectric detector, realized through CMOS compatible process, shows the potential for massdeployment of gas sensors in environmental sensing networks.
A thermal emitter fabricated on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible facilities is a key component for low-cost mid-infrared gas sensing. While conventional thermal emitters have broad spectrum and wide emission angle, which limit the sensing performance. In this work, a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based thermal emitter with photonic crystal has been designed and fabricated using CMOS-compatible technology. The photonic crystal enables the emission wavelength selectivity within mid-infrared regime. By engineering photonic crystal dimension, the emission enhancement wavelength can be matched to the fingerprint wavelength of chemical gas for efficient chemical gas sensing purpose.
We present the optical and electrical properties of AlN-based and 12% doped ScAlN-based pyroelectric detectors fabricated on 8-inch wafers respectively. Both AlN and ScAlN materials are deposited at a temperature of ~200oC, making them potential candidates for CMOS compatible MEMS pyroelectric detectors. FTIR spectroscopy is used to measure the absorption of these pyroelectric detectors over the wavelength range of ~2–14 μm and the results show absorption improvement up to ~75% for ScAlN-based pyroelectric detectors compared to that of AlN-based pyroelectric detectors at the wavelength of 4.26 μm where CO2 gas absorption of IR radiation is anticipated. Higher output current (~3-fold increase) is also observed from ScAlN-based pyroelectric detectors. Other than pyroelectric coefficient that contributes to improved performance for ScAlN-based pyroelectric detectors, we believe that absorptivity of the device also plays a major role in the performance of pyroelectric IR detectors. The results obtained from the study of the electrical and optical properties of AlN-based and ScAlN-based CMOS compatible MEMS pyroelectric detectors will bring forth potential applications of these detectors onto multi-functional integrable and monolithic platforms.
Silicon Photonics taps on the volume manufacturing capability of traditional silicon manufacturing techniques, to
provide dramatic cost reduction for various application domains employing optical communications technology. In
addition, an important new application domain would be the implementation of high bandwidth optical interconnects in
and around CPUs. Besides volume manufacturability, Silicon Photonics also allows the monolithic integration of
multiple optical components on the same wafer to realize highly compact photonic integrated circuits (PICs), in which
functional complexity can be increased for little additional cost. An important pre-requisite for Si PICs is a device library
in which the devices are compatibly developed around a common SOI platform. A device library comprising passive and
active components was built, which includes light guiding components, wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM)
components, switches, carrier-based Si modulators and electro-absorption based Ge/Si modulators, Ge/Si photodiodes
and avalanche photodiodes, as well as light emitting devices. By integrating various library devices, PIC test vehicles
such as monolithic PON transceivers and DWDM receivers have been demonstrated. A challenge with Si PICs lies with
the coupling of light into and out of the sub-micrometer Si waveguides. The mode size mismatch of optical fibers and Si
waveguides was addressed by developing a monolithically integrated multi-stage mode converter which offers low loss
together with relaxed fiber-to-waveguide alignment tolerances. An active assembly platform using MEMS technology
was also developed to actively align and focus light from bonded lasers into waveguides.
This paper presents design, simulation and fabrication of a wafer level packaged Microelectromechanical Systems
(MEMS) scanning mirror. In particular we emphasize on the process development and materials characterization of In-
Ag solder for a new wafer level hermetic/vacuum package using low temperature wafer bonding technology. The
micromirror is actuated with an electrostatic comb actuator and operates in resonant torsional mode. The mirror plate
size is 1.0 mm × 1.0 mm. The dynamic vibration characteristics have been analyzed by using FEM tools. With a single
rectangular torsion bar, the scanning frequency is 20 KHz. Besides, the hermetically sealed packaged is favored by
commercial applications. The wafer level package is successfully carried out at process temperature of 180°C. With
proper process design, we may lead the form a single phase of Ag2In at the bonding interface, in which it is an
intermetallic compound of high melting temperature. This new wafer level packaging approach allows us to have high
temperature stability of wafer level packaged scanning mirror devices. The wafer level packaged devices are able to
withstand the peak temperature in SMT (surface mount technology) manufacturing lines. It is a promising technology for
commercializing MEMS devices.
A taper coupler with multimode input and single mode output is presented for coupling between edge emitting laser
diode and silicon waveguide. The tapered coupler structure is optimized and tolerance for laser diode placement is
studied. A typical coupling efficiency of -2dB is achieved from laser diode to silicon waveguide. With tolerance of +/-
4μm laterally or vertically, the variation of the coupling efficiency is about 3dB. The tolerance is large compared with
other methods. Tilting angle at laser diode and the small gap between tapered coupler and silicon waveguide also affect
the overall coupling. From our studies, horizontal and vertical offsets are more critical for laser diode placement in order
to have a good coupling. The new design can be applied to photonics packaging because it will make passive assembly
easier by having larger tolerance for packaging compared with the conventional method with lens.
A new method of coupling the light from a laser diode to a Single Mode Fiber (SMF) with large alignment tolerances
and without using coupling lenses is presented. A pseudo vertical tapered coupler is designed for light coupling between
laser diode and single mode fiber. It has a large input aperture which is about 100 times the size of the laser waveguide
cross-section. The tapered coupler provides single mode output and matches the mode size with the single mode fiber.
The tapered coupler is fabricated on a silicon optical bench and is located between the laser and the fiber through the
silicon micrfabrication process. The misalignment between the fiber and taper coupler can be very small since this is
controlled by high precision silicon optical bench patterning processes. The coupler relaxes the laser diode placement
accuracies and eliminates the need for a coupling lens. Design Studies showed that the tolerance between the laser diode
and taper coupler can be more than +/-5μm misalignment at x-y, and +/-0.5degree tilting angle tolerance and the
fabricated assembly results are encouraging with good placement tolerances and coupling efficiency. The laser to single
mode fiber coupling tolerances is greatly improved and passive alignment for laser and single mode fiber is realized. The
technology can be useful for multi channel optical assembly where significant device and process cost saving can be
achieved and is suitable for functional integration for silicon photonics.
The notching and stiction problem, which widely exists in silicon on insulator (SOI) microstructure fabrication, were resolved in this study. In this paper, a new plasma trench technique that is based on the deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process is proposed. In this modified process, the deep reactive ion etching (RIE) was divided into several steps, where conformal plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) oxide coating, and directional oxide etch back were employed to prevent the notching effect and the reactive ion etching (RIE) lag effect is also improved. Therefore, the microstructures regardless of the feature sizes could be realized. The stiction problem is eliminated by using dry chemical release replacing wet release in this approach, where the notching effect is used. The notching or footing effect was exploited for attaining the lateral etch following the deployment of the anisotropic plasma etching of the inductively coupled plasma (ICP). This method was proven useful for both the uniform and non-uniform feature designs. With this novel process, the high aspect ratio beams can be obtained. The thickness of the silicon layer is 75 μm, while the depth of the beams is 70 μum where the 5 μm silicon was etched to suspend the movable beams. The aspect ratio is as high as 35. Trenches with very different widths of 2.5 μm and 35 μm are also achieved at the same time.
A tunable optical add/drop multiplexer (OADM) is demonstrated byu sing a micromachined 2 × 2 optical switch and a tunable fiber Bragg grating (FBG). The new hybrid OADM can be tuned to add/drop one of the multi input channels dynamically. The insertion loss of the dropped channel and added channel are 2.84 dB and 1.8 dB respectively. The transmission loss is 2.04 dB. These losses are all able to reduce greatlyi f the circulators are modified. The crosstalk between channels is less than -20 dB, and it can be further reduced byi mproving the reflectivityo f FBG. The tuning speed is on the order of millisecond. The tuning range is 3.0nm. The fabricated system is demonstrated by selectively adding/dropping one of the adjacent four channels with the spacing of 100GHz. Systems with multi channels being dropped and / or added can be achieved bycas cading the proposed structure.
This paper describes LISA (Lateral isolated Silicon Accelerometer) technology developed by IME< Singapore and its application on silicon vertical optical switch fabrication. Key processes in LISA technology for optical switch fabrication include deep trench etch and oxide refill to enable insulating anchors in silicon substrate, second deep trench etch to fabricate movable microstructures and metal layer covering for switch surface improvement. In this paper, deep trench (deeper than 35 um) oxide refill process is introduced, the dielectric characteristic of the isolation is evaluated, and more than 100V breakdown voltage is obtained, which is much higher that the requirement in optical switch driving voltage. Some process issues related to high aspect ratio trench etch and release such as notching on silicon beam top and sidewall are shown and discussed, a double spacer process is utilized accordingly to solve the issues. Besides, a mask free metal coating process is presented to improve the mirror surface and light reflectivity. The vertical optical mirrors fabricated by the LISA technology is 35um in height and um in width, the switch displacement is larger than 40um under 35V DC bias, the optical characteristics of the switch is under testing.
High speed, low insertion loss optical add/drop multiplexer (ADM) is designed and fabricated. The optical vertical micromirror is fabricated by deep dry etching, the aspect ratio reaches as high as 20. A thin aluminum film is deposited on the sidewall of the micromirror to increase the reflectivity. The anchors and pads are fabricated firstly, followed by the comb drive, micromirror and fiber grooves. Refilling technique is introduced to electrically insulate the anchors and pads from the substrate while still maintaining the mechanical support. The anchors and pads are strong enough to sustain the floating structures (micromirror and moving comb) and also assure good electrical connection to the electrostatic comb drive so that the external voltage can be applied. By improving dry etching, the finger width is only 2micrometers and the gap is only 2.5micrometers . A typical electrostatic comb drive is fabricated by the deep reactive ion etching (RIE) and underneath releasing. Folded suspension beams of 800micrometers long, 2.0 micrometers wide and 35micrometers deep are employed to support the movable micromirror. The stiffness along the desired lateral direction is 0.21N/m. Comb drive using three electrodes is employed. Its applied voltage is decreased by a ratio of 0.707 compared with that of the two electrodes system, and the switching speed is also increased. To simply the optical fiber assembly, fiber grooves are fabricated along with the other structures. This device has a typical of optical ADM that can be widely used in all optical networks. All of the processes are compatible with IC technology and can be integrated with control circuits in a single chip.
KEYWORDS: Micromirrors, Signal attenuation, Variable optical attenuators, Single mode fibers, Deep reactive ion etching, Optical switching, Optical interconnects, Quantum wells, Wavelength division multiplexing, Control systems
Variable optical attenuator (VOA) is undergoing to be a mainstream component of wavelength division multiplex (WDM) networks to monitor and control the optical power of wavelength channels. In this paper, a free-space VOA fabricated by micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology to operate in the 1.55 micrometers wavelength region is described. It employs a micromirror driven by an electrostatic comb drive to cut partially into the light beam between two single mode fibers (SMFs), enabling the attenuation. The micromirror has a size of 30 micrometers X 30 micrometers and is coated with aluminum to increase the reflectance. The moving fingers of comb drive and the micromirror are supported by folded suspension beams over the substrate. By applying different voltage to the comb drive, the micromirror translates to different position to achieve an attenuation ranging from 0.4dB to 50dB, and even higher. The nonlinear relationship between the position of the micromirror and attenuation is analyzed. The distributions of the light beams at the micromirror and the output fiber end are investigated respectively. And the influence of the separations between the micromirror, the input and output fiber ends is also discussed to obtain different attenuation resolutions. At low attenuation stages, fine tuning of attenuation is obtainable. The largest attenuation is driven by 21voltage. Deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process is employed to fabricate the VOA and the micro loading effect is remedied by mask design.
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