Low-loss tantalum pentoxide photonics with a CMOS-compatible process.

We report a Ta2O5 photonic platform with a propagation loss of 0.49 dB/cm at 1550 nm, of 0.86 dB/cm at 780 nm, and of 3.76 dB/cm at 2000 nm. The thermal bistability measurement is conducted in the entire C-band for the first time to reveal the absorption loss of Ta2O5 waveguides, offering guidelines for further reduction of the waveguide loss. We also characterize the Ta2O5 waveguide temperature response, which shows favorable thermal stability. The fabrication process temperature is below 350°C, which is friendly to integration with active optoelectronic components.

Wafer-scale inverted gallium phosphide-on-insulator rib waveguides for nonlinear photonics.

We report a gallium phosphide-on-insulator (GaP-OI) photonic platform fabricated by an intermediate-layer bonding process aiming to increase the manufacture scalability in a low-cost manner. This is enabled by the "etch-n-transfer" sequence, which results in inverted rib waveguide structures. The shallow-etched 1.8 µm-wide waveguide has a propagation loss of 23.5 dB/cm at 1550 nm wavelength. Supercontinuum generation based on the self-phase modulation effect is observed when the waveguides are pumped by femtosecond pulses. The nonlinear refractive index of GaP, n2, is extracted to be 1.9 × 10-17 m2/W, demonstrating the great promise of the GaP-OI platform in third-order nonlinear applications.