Silicon Carbide photonic platform based on suspended subwavelength waveguides

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable silicon carbide photonic platform with suspended subwavelength waveguides, enabling efficient light guiding and quantum applications by overcoming fabrication challenges and leveraging SiC's nonlinear and defect properties.

Contribution

The authors present a novel design for a silicon carbide photonic platform using suspended subwavelength waveguides, fabricated with a single lithography step, suitable for classical and quantum photonics.

Findings

Simulated key optical components demonstrating functionality.

Analyzed how to utilize SiC's high nonlinearities.

Explored potential for quantum defect integration.

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) displays a unique combination of optical and spin-related properties that make it interesting for photonics and quantum technologies. However, guiding light by total internal reflection can be difficult to achieve, especially when SiC is grown as thin films on higher index substrates, like Silicon. Fabricating suspended, subwavelength waveguides requires a single lithography step and offers a solution to the confinement problem, while preserving the design flexibility required for a scalable and complete photonic platform. Here we present a design for such platform, that can be used for both classical and quantum optics operation. We simulate the key optical components and analyze how to exploit the high nonlinearities of SiC and its defects.