Optical probe for nondestructive wafer-scale characterization of photonic elements

Published

January 27, 2017

Author(s)

Thomas Michels, Vladimir A. Aksyuk

Abstract

This article describes fabrication and operation of a microfabricated photonic waveguide loop probe for nondestructive evanescent coupling and localized testing of nanophotonic devices and circuits. A microfabricated 300 nm x 260 nm silicon (Si) waveguide loop forming a 10 μm diameter half-circle is suspended in air at the tip of a cantilever extending from a single-mode fiber-connectorized 1.5 mm by 3.5 mm silicon on insulator (SOI) chip. The probe is designed for the use with commercial scanning probe microscopes (SPM) for accurate positioning, controlled optical coupling, and chip-scale and wafer-scale testing. We demonstrate this by performing spectroscopy on a Q 106 Si microdisk optical cavity. The SPM enables precise measurement and stable control of sample-probe distance to vary the coupling rate from under- to over-coupled regimes.

Citation

IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Volume

29

Issue

8

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2017.2660439

Keywords

optical probe, wafer-scale testing, SPM

Citation

Michels, T. and Aksyuk, V. (2017), Optical probe for nondestructive wafer-scale characterization of photonic elements, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2017.2660439 (Accessed April 30, 2024)