High quality factor etchless silicon photonic ring resonators

We demonstrate high quality factor etchless silicon photonic ring resonators fabricated by selective thermal oxidation of silicon without the silicon layer being exposed to any plasma etching throughout the fabrication process. We achieve a high intrinsic quality factor of 510,000 in 50 mu m-radius ring resonators, corresponding to a ring loss of 0.8 dB/cm. The device has a total chip insertion loss of 2.5 dB, achieved by designing etchless silicon inverse nanotapers at both the input and output of the chip. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America