Stress-induced birefringence in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides

Winnie N. Ye; Dan-Xia Xu; Siegfried Janz; Pavel Cheben; Andre Delage; Marie-Josee Picard; Boris Lamontagne; N. Garry Tarr

doi:10.1117/12.529602

1 July 2004 Stress-induced birefringence in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides

Winnie N. Ye, Dan-Xia Xu, Siegfried Janz, Pavel Cheben, Andre Delage, Marie-Josee Picard, Boris Lamontagne, N. Garry Tarr

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 5357, Optoelectronic Integration on Silicon; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.529602
Event: Integrated Optoelectronic Devices 2004, 2004, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

We show that stress engineering can be used to adjust the SOI waveguide birefringence to the stringent polarization tolerances expected of commercial devices, using only standard silicon processes. With decreasing device dimensions and high index contrast the waveguide birefringence becomes increasingly sensitive to device geometry. As a result, it is almost impossible to eliminate waveguide birefringence by adjusting waveguide profile alone. This paper presents, for the first time, a systematic study of the stress-induced birefringence of SOI waveguides. Through full-vectorial finite-element simulations, we investigate the variation of stress-induced birefringence with waveguide core and cladding geometries. It is found that the stress-induced birefringence is determined by the waveguide cross-section, the upper cladding layer thickness, and film stress levels. We develop a waveguide model that predicts the total waveguide birefringence and guides the post-fabrication processing steps. An experimental demonstration of a polarization insensitive SOI arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) demultiplexer is presented. The polarization dependent wavelength shifts measured experimentally agree well with the simulations.

Citation Download Citation

Winnie N. Ye, Dan-Xia Xu, Siegfried Janz, Pavel Cheben, Andre Delage, Marie-Josee Picard, Boris Lamontagne, and N. Garry Tarr "Stress-induced birefringence in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides", Proc. SPIE 5357, Optoelectronic Integration on Silicon, (1 July 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.529602

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available