Optical characterization of deuterated silicon-rich nitride waveguides

TL;DR

This study investigates deuterated silicon-rich nitride films grown via plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, demonstrating reduced absorption at 1550nm and characterizing their linear and nonlinear optical properties for integrated photonics.

Contribution

It introduces deuterated silicon-rich nitride films with suppressed Si-H absorption and provides detailed optical characterization of these materials and their waveguides.

Findings

Deuterated films eliminate Si-H related absorption at 1550nm.

Waveguides exhibit a linear refractive index of 2.46.

Nonlinear refractive index measured at 9.8 x 10^{-18} m^2/W.

Abstract

Chemical vapor deposition-based growth techniques allow flexible design of CMOS-compatible materials. Here, we report the deuterated silicon-rich nitride films grown using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The linear and nonlinear properties of the films are characterized. We compare the absorption at 1550nm wavelength region for films grown with $SiH_4$ and $SiD_4$, and experimentally confirm that the silicon-rich nitride films grown with $SiD_4$ eliminates Si-H related absorption. Waveguides fabricated on the films are further shown to possess a linear and nonlinear refractive index of 2.46 and $9.8$ X $10^{-18} m^2 W^{-1}$ respectively.