Suspended gallium arsenide platform for building large scale photonic integrated circuits: Passive devices

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the fabrication of passive photonic components in suspended gallium arsenide, showing its potential for large-scale integrated circuits with applications in quantum photonics, cryogenics, and energy-efficient transceivers.

Contribution

It introduces a method to create passive photonic devices in suspended GaAs, expanding material options for large-scale PICs beyond silicon.

Findings

Successful fabrication of grating couplers, waveguides, interferometers, and resonators in suspended GaAs

Potential applications in quantum photonics and cryogenic systems

Viability of GaAs for large-scale integrated photonic circuits

Abstract

The spectacular success of silicon-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in the past decade naturally begs the question of whether similar fabrication procedures can be applied to other material platforms with more desirable optical properties. In this work, we demonstrate the individual passive components (grating couplers, waveguides, multi-mode interferometers and ring resonators) necessary for building large scale integrated circuits in suspended gallium arsenide (GaAs). Implementing PICs in suspended GaAs is a viable route towards achieving optimal system performance in areas with stringent device constraints like energy efficient transceivers for exascale systems, integrated electro-optic comb lasers, integrated quantum photonics, cryogenic photonics and electromechanical guided wave acousto-optics.