Integrated microheater on the 4H-silicon-carbide-on-insulator platform and its applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces integrated microheaters on the 4H-SiCOI platform, enabling resonance tuning, fast thermo-optic scans, and selective filtering, thus enhancing the platform's tunability and reconfigurability for chip-scale photonic applications.

Contribution

The work demonstrates the integration of microheaters with 4H-SiCOI microresonators, achieving significant resonance tuning and reconfigurability not previously reported.

Findings

Achieved a resonance tuning rate of 11.7 pm/mW.

Demonstrated fast thermo-optic scans with a 7 μs thermal time constant.

Implemented an add-drop filter with 5 GHz bandwidth and <1 dB insertion loss.

Abstract

Recent progress in the 4H-silicon-carbide-on-insulator (4H-SiCOI) platform has resulted in the demonstration of essential building blocks such as low-loss waveguides and microresonators. In this work, we add tunability to the 4H-SiCOI platform by integrating microheaters with compact microresonators. The strong thermo-optic effect in SiC enables a resonance tuning rate of $11.7$ pm/mW for a 36-$\mu$m-radius SiC microring, with a maximum wavelength shift up to $2.4$ nm (300 GHz). The thermal time constant of the microheater is estimated near 7 $\mu$s, corresponding to a 3-dB electrical bandwidth of 40 kHz. As a demonstration of potential applications, we employ the microheater to perform fast thermo-optic scans to deterministically access the single-soliton state of a 36-$\mu$m-radius microcomb source. In addition, an add-drop filter based on an over-coupled 18-$\mu$m-radius SiC microring is combined with the microcomb source for the selective filtering of individual comb lines, featuring an approximate 3-dB bandwidth of 5 GHz and an insertion loss of less than 1 dB. With such demonstrations, our work brings the much-needed tunability and reconfigurability to the 4H-SiCOI platform, paving the way for a wealth of chip-scale applications.