Low-loss singlemode amorphous silicon waveguides

Amorphous silicon waveguides were obtained by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition and anisotropic plasma etching. Rectangular multimode waveguides as well as singlemode ridge waveguides were fabricated. Scattered light measurements at 1550 nm (1300 nm) wavelength showed a low propagation loss of ≤0.5 dB/cm (1.6 dB/cm) for multimode waveguides and 2.0 dB/cm (5.0 dB/cm) for highly-confined singlemode waveguides.