High performance fully etched isotropic microring resonators in thin-film lithium niobate on insulator platform

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the design, fabrication, and experimental validation of high-performance, fully etched isotropic microring resonators in thin-film lithium niobate, achieving low loss and high extinction ratios for compact optical devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fully etched isotropic microring resonator design in thin-film lithium niobate with detailed experimental performance metrics.

Findings

Measured device loss ~7 dB/cm, close to predicted <10 dB/cm.

Achieved extinction of ~25 dB in resonators, near critical coupling.

Optical bandwidth of 49 pm (~6 GHz) and free spectral range of ~5.26 nm.

Abstract

We present our design, fabrication, and experimental results for very high-performance isotropic microring resonators with small radii (~ 30 {\mu}m) based on single-mode strip waveguides and transverse magnetic (TM) polarization in a fully etched lithium niobate (Z-cut) thin-film on insulator. The loss of the devices is predicted to be < 10 dB/cm, and is measured to be ~ 7 dB/cm. The measured optical responses of microring resonators exhibit an extinction of ~ 25 dB (close to critical coupling), a 3 dB optical bandwidth of 49 pm (~ 6 GHz) for all-pass structures, an extinction of ~ 10 dB for add-drop structures, and a free spectral range of ~ 5.26 nm, all of which are in excellent agreement with the design. This work is the first step towards ultra-compact and fully isotropic optical modulators in thin-film lithium niobate on insulator.