Multilayer silicon integrated photonic platforms for 3D photonic devices and circuits

This talk presents my group's progress in foundry-compatible multilayer silicon nitride-on-silicon integrated photonic platforms. Silicon nitride enables improved passive photonic components that can be integrated with active components in the silicon layer, including highly efficient modulators, high-speed photodetectors, and potentially hybrid lasers. Multilayer platforms also allow for new device geometries for grating couplers and polarization rotator splitters that take advantage of the strong optical coupling between the waveguide levels. Further, multilayer platforms make possible extraordinarily low loss over/under-pass types of crossings. Taken together, these capabilities make multilayer silicon nitride-on-silicon photonic platforms ideal for the implementation of very large-scale, three-dimensional silicon photonic circuits, which are needed for applications such as optical switching and phased arrays.