Ultra-low-loss optical interconnect enabled by topological unidirectional guided resonance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a topological unidirectional guided resonance approach to create ultra-low-loss grating couplers, significantly improving energy efficiency for photonic chip interconnects and enabling scalable photonic integration.

Contribution

It presents a novel method employing topological UGRs to achieve record-low loss in grating couplers without bottom mirrors, enhancing photonic chip interconnect efficiency.

Findings

Achieved a 0.34 dB loss in silicon-on-insulator grating couplers.

Demonstrated a 0.94 dB loss in inter-chip photonic connections.

Bandwidth exceeding 30 nm at 1550 nm wavelength.

Abstract

Grating couplers that interconnect photonic chips to off-chip components are of essential importance for various optoelectronics applications. Despite numerous efforts in past decades, existing grating couplers still suffer from poor energy efficiency and thus hinder photonic integration toward a larger scale. Here, we theoretically propose and experimentally demonstrate a method to achieve ultra-low-loss grating coupler by employing topological unidirectional guided resonances (UGRs). Leveraging the unidirectional emitting nature of UGRs, the useless downward radiation is greatly suppressed with no mirror placed on the bottom. By engineering the dispersion and apodizing the geometry of grating, we realize a grating coupler on 340 nm silicon-on-insulator platform with a record-low-loss of 0.34 dB and bandwidth exceeding 30 nm at the telecom wavelength of 1550 nm. We further show a pair of grating couplers works as optic via that interconnects two stacked photonic chips with a loss of only 0.94 dB. Our work sheds light on the feasibility of energy-efficient optical interconnect for silicon photonics, and paving the way to large-scale photonic integration for applications from optical communication to photonic computing.