Hydrogenated amorphous silicon photonic device trimming by UV-irradiation

A method to compensate for fabrication tolerances and to fine-tune individual photonic circuit components is inevitable for waferscale photonic systems even with most-advanced CMOS-fabrication tools. We report a cost-effective and highly accurate method for the permanent trimming of hydrogenated amorphous silicon photonic devices by UV-irradiation. Microring resonators and Mach-Zehnder-interferometers were utilized as photonic test devices. The MZIs were tuned forth and back over their complete free spectral range of 5.5 nm by locally trimming the two MZI-arms. The trimming range exceeds 8 nm for compact ring resonators with trimming accuracies of 20pm. Trimming speeds of ≥ 10 GHz/s were achieved. The components did not show any substantial device degradation. © 2014 Optical Society of America.

DDC Class

530: Physik

Projekt(e)

FOR 653: Aktive und abstimmbare mikrophotonische Systeme auf der Basis von Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI)

Funding Organisations

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

More Funding Information

The authors thank German Research Fund ( DFG grant FOR-653) for funding. Ralf Steingrüber from Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI-Berlin) is acknowledged for performing the EBL process. Prof. Ernst Brinkmeyer and Dr. Jost Müller from the Institute of Optical Communication Technology at TUHH are acknowledged for support with the argon ion laser. This publication was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) in the funding programme “Open Access Publishing”.

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Hydrogenated amorphous silicon photonic device trimming by UV-irradiation