Boosting the SiN nonlinear photonic platform with transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that embedding molybdenum disulfide monolayers into silicon nitride waveguides significantly enhances nonlinear optical effects, enabling efficient four-wave mixing at low power levels.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid waveguide design with multilayer MoS2, achieving two orders of magnitude improvement in nonlinear performance over standard silicon nitride waveguides.

Findings

Two orders of magnitude increase in nonlinear effects with multilayer MoS2

Achieved 6.3 dB signal-idler conversion efficiency at 1550 nm

Enhanced four-wave mixing in micro ring resonator configurations

Abstract

In the past few years, we have witnessed an increased interest in the use of 2D materials for the realization of hybrid photonic nonlinear waveguides. Although graphene has attracted most of the attention, other families of 2D materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides have also shown promising nonlinear performances. In this work, we propose a strategy for designing silicon nitride waveguide structures embedded with molybdenum disulfide for nonlinear applications. The transverse geometry of the hybrid waveguides structure is optimized for high third order nonlinear effects using optogeometrical engineering and multiple layers of molybdenum disulfide. Stacking multiple monolayers, results in an improvement of 2 orders of magnitude in comparison with standard silicon nitride waveguides. The performance of the hybrid waveguides is then investigated in terms of four wave mixing enhancement in micro ring resonator configurations. A 6,3 dB signal idler conversion efficiency is reached around 1550 nm wavelength for a 5 mW pumping level.