Efficient Integration or Direct Growth on SOI of Foundry-Scale CMOS Compatible Second Order Nonlinear Materials and/or Short-Wavelength Photonic Materials with Low Optical Loss

OUSD (R&E) CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Quantum Science OBJECTIVE: Development of a foundry-compatible, direct growth in a Silicon on insulator (SOI) stack, second-order nonlinear material that can be that can be used for photon conversion and low loss waveguides. DESCRIPTION: Silicon on insulator (SOI) has been a growing standard platform for foundry-scale (300mm) integrated photonics. In that platform modulation and switching are done with mainly with thermal or carrier injection-based devices since silicon's crystalline structure is centrosymmetric and therefore does not have a second-order nonlinearity. These methods of modulation are either slow (thermal) or lossy (carrier injection) and for low loss demanding applications such as quantum photonics make the systems tough to scale. Secondly, for quantum or frequency conversion applications silicon or silicon nitride gives no native access to the second order nonlinearity (unless acquired through electric field induced changes or strain tuning) and therefore must rely on the weaker third order nonlinearity. The ability to have a second order nonlinear material would allow for efficient photon generation/conversion, as well as high speed low-loss optical modulation for classical and quantum applications. The goal of this effort is to identify, develop, and demonstrate second order nonlinear materials that operate in the visible and infrared (400-1700nm) and can be directly integrated with the foundry scale SOI platform. PHASE I: Identify a set of second order nonlinear materials that are foundry compatible with the 300mm SOI platform. Demonstrate on the small scale (