ABSTRACT
Increasing the working optical bandwidth of a photonic circuit is important for many applications, in particular chemical sensing at mid-infrared wavelengths. This useful bandwidth is not only limited by the transparency range of waveguide materials, but also the range over which a waveguide is single or multimoded for predictable circuit behaviour. In this work, we show the first experimental demonstration of "endlessly single-mode" waveguiding in silicon photonics. Silicon-on-insulator waveguides were designed, fabricated and characterised at 1.95 µm and 3.80 µm. The waveguides were shown to support low-loss propagation (1.46 ± 0.13 dB/cm loss at 1.95 µm and 1.55 ± 0.35 dB/cm at 3.80 µm) and single-mode propagation was confirmed at 1.95 µm, meaning that only the fundamental mode was present over the wavelength range 1.95 - 3.80 µm. We also present the prospects for the use of these waveguides in sensing applications.
ABSTRACT
Beam splitters are core components of photonic integrated circuits and are often implemented with multimode interference couplers. While these devices offer high performance, their operational bandwidth is still restrictive for sensing applications in the mid-infrared wavelength range. Here we experimentally demonstrate a subwavelength-structured 2×2 multimode interference coupler with high performance in the 3.1-3.7µm range, doubling the bandwidth of a conventional device.
