Crack barriers for thick SiN using dicing.

Silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides need to be thick to show low dispersion which is desired for nonlinear applications. However, high quality thick SiN produced by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) contains high internal stress, causing it to crack. Crack-free wafers with thick SiN can be produced by adding crack barriers. We demonstrate the use of dicing trenches as a simple single-step method to produce high quality (loss<0.5 dB/cm) crack-free SiN. We show Kerr-comb generation in a ring resonator to highlight the high quality and low dispersion of the waveguides.