Advanced process technologies for photonics waveguide patterning

Silicon photonics platforms leveraging 300mm manufacturing fabrication plants is a growing sector. This trend will continue as the demand for energy efficient data centers, advanced quantum computing architectures and AR/VR drive demand forward. GlobalFoundries is at the forefront of advanced photonics platforms implementation and have recently announced it is collaborating with industry leaders to deliver innovative, unique, feature-rich solutions to solve some of the biggest challenges facing data centers today. In this paper we investigate the impact of process manufacturing techniques typically used in advanced logic and memory on photonics waveguides uniformity improvement and smoothing. Some focus will be placed on the patterning process itself investigating effects of plasma VUV cure, direct current superposition and area selective deposition on resist for downstream line edge roughness and line width roughness impact. We will also review impact of silicon nitride film uniformity and top roughness smoothing on final waveguide optical performance. While silicon photonics features are much larger than logic features, process requirements to achieve required optical performance are stringent and will require innovative solutions to continue driving down optical losses.