Electrical and Electronic Engineering - Theses
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ItemHighly efficient silicon photonics devices for next generation on-chip interconnection networks( 2017)Silicon photonics provides a unique solution to increase the intra- and inter-chip bandwidth and break the transmission layer bottleneck of the conventional cooper wire connections. In order to realize fully integrated on-chip optical interconnection networks, high efficient silicon integrated devices with low loss, broadband and compact size attract more and more attentions. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate novel silicon photonic devices for photonic integrated circuits. The dissertation starts with a literature survey of key silicon photonics components, which provides basic concepts for the following research work. Then the detailed fabrication processes are introduced, including fabrication processes for single layer passive devices and spot size converter facet smoothing. Electron-beam lithography (EBL) and Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) techniques are discussed. We also highlight several important details during the fabrication to avoid failures. The third part describes three novel devices proposed based on original publications. The circular high contrast grating (HCG) shows ultra-high reflectivity over a broad working bandwidth (> 300 nm). The high polarization extinction ratio (PER) of the circular HCG further demonstrates its suitability as a reflector in hybrid silicon laser designs to avoid mode degeneration. The second device is a 2×2 polarization beam splitter (PBS) on the silicon nitride platform. The PBS has low insertion loss and can support broadband operation with a compact size, which is very challenging with the low material index of silicon nitride. The device was experimentally demonstrated and the results match well with simulation results. Further optimization is also discussed. The third device is an interlayer coupler for high density optical interconnect systems. Interlayer coupler is a critical component for three-dimensional photonic integrated circuits to further increase the chip density. The coupler is designed for both the silicon and the silicon nitride platforms. For the silicon nitride based design, a nonlinear inverse taper with low loss and compact length is further introduced. Compared to the grating based and inverse taper based solutions, the proposed couplers show higher efficiency and lower interlayer crosstalk. The final part of this thesis summarizes all previous work and discusses some future work based on previous outcome.