Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Integrated Buried Heaters for Efficient Spectral Control of Air-Clad Microresonator Frequency Combs

Published

Author(s)

Gregory Moille, Daron Westly, Edgar Perez, Meredith Metzler, Gregory Simelgor, Kartik Srinivasan

Abstract

Integrated heaters are a basic ingredient within the photonics toolbox, in particular for microresonator frequency tuning through the thermo-refractive effect. Resonators that are fully embedded in a solid cladding (typically SiO\textsubscript2}) allow for straightforward lossless integration of heater elements. However, air-clad resonators, which are of great interest for short wavelength dispersion engineering and direct interfacing with atomic/molecular systems, do not usually have similarly low loss and efficient integrated heater integration through standard fabrication. Here, we develop a new approach in which the integrated heater is embedded in SiO$_2$ below the waveguiding layer, enabling more efficient heating and more arbitrary routing of the heater traces than possible in a lateral configuration. We incorporate these buried heaters within a stoichiometric Si$_3$N$_4$ process flow that includes high-temperature ($>$1000$^\circ$C) annealing. Microring resonators with a 1THz free spectral range and quality factors near 10$^6$ are demonstrated, and the resonant modes are tuned by nearly 1.5THz, a 5$\times$ improvement compared to equivalent devices with lateral heaters Finally, we demonstrate broadband dissipative Kerr soliton generation in this platform, and show how the heaters can be utilized to aid in bringing relevant lock frequencies within a detectable range.
Citation
APL Photonics
Volume
7
Issue
12

Keywords

frequency combs, nonlinear optics, soliton, nanophotonics, fabrication

Citation

Moille, G. , Westly, D. , Perez, E. , Metzler, M. , Simelgor, G. and Srinivasan, K. (2022), Integrated Buried Heaters for Efficient Spectral Control of Air-Clad Microresonator Frequency Combs, APL Photonics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0127466 , https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=935393 (Accessed December 9, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created November 22, 2022, Updated December 5, 2022