Multi-planar amorphous silicon photonics with compact interplanar couplers, cross talk mitigation, and low crossing loss

Published

October 11, 2017

Author(s)

Jeffrey T. Chiles, Sonia M. Buckley, Nima Nader, Sae Woo Nam, Richard P. Mirin, Jeffrey M. Shainline

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a photonic routing architecture that can efficiently utilize the space of multi-plane (3D) photonic integration. A wafer with three planes of amorphous silicon waveguides was fabricated and characterized, demonstrating 4 dB loss per out-of-plane waveguide crossing, 0.05 {+or-}0.02 dB per interplane coupler, and microring resonators on three planes with a quality factors up to 8.2 x 10⁴. We also explore a phase velocity mapping strategy to mitigate the cross talk between co-propagating waveguides on different planes. These results expand the utility of 3D photonic integration for applications such as optical interconnects, neuromorphic computing and optical phased arrays.

Citation

Applied Physics Letters

Volume

2

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5000384

Keywords

integrated photonics, 3D integration, amorphous silicon, optical interconnects

Citation

Chiles, J. , Buckley, S. , Nader, N. , Nam, S. , Mirin, R. and Shainline, J. (2017), Multi-planar amorphous silicon photonics with compact interplanar couplers, cross talk mitigation, and low crossing loss, Applied Physics Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5000384 (Accessed October 2, 2025)