Active silicon photonics hybrid integration for high-speed applications and performance evaluation after cosmic environment

Abstract

Silicon (Si) photonics offers great opportunities for on-chip optical interconnects, optical communications, signal processing, and sensing for its advantages of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatibility, high yield, low power consumption, and high data rates. However, conventional Si photonics components may have bottlenecks due to the limited material property of silicon for high-speed, high efficient, and tunable operations. Also, the performance reliability of silicon devices under harsh (such as cosmic) environments is unknown. This thesis focuses on a few topics addressing those concerns. First, it evaluates the performance change of silicon Mach-Zehnder Modulators after cosmic radiation, laying a fundamental step for future deploying silicon based on chip optical communications in aerospace. Then, the hybrid integration of low-dimensional materials on silicon is demonstrated for high-speed optoelectronic devices and all-optical trimming devices. Last, direct laser writing technique is proposed to have direct patterning and material phase change on some thin film materials for low-cost and mask-free device patterning and tunable device applications.