Ultra-thin mid-infrared silicon grating coupler

Mid-infrared (mid-IR) silicon photonics has been attracting great attention due to its tremendous potential applications in nonlinear optics, ranging, sensing, and spectroscopy. To date, mid-IR silicon devices have usually been developed based on silicon wafers with top-layer silicon thicknesses of hundreds of nanometers. Compared with the thick silicon devices, tens-of-nanometers thin silicon devices can provide giant evanescent-field energy proportions and optical mode areas, being significant for many biochemical sensing and nonlinear optics applications. However, ultra-thin mid-IR silicon devices have seldom been studied due to the difficulty of light coupling. Here, we demonstrated an ultra-thin focusing subwavelength-grating coupler for mid-IR ultra-thin suspended subwavelength-grating-cladding waveguide coupling. The results show that the grating has a maximum coupling efficiency of -7.1 dB at a center wavelength of 2200 nm with a 1-dB bandwidth of similar to 115 nm and back reflection of -19.9 dB. We also measured the fiber alignment tolerance of 12 mu m for 3-dB coupling efficiency reduction and bending optical loss of 0.25 dB/90 degrees. Our results pave the way to developing mid-IR ultra-thin photonic integrated circuits. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group

Automated summary

This study demonstrates an ultra-thin focusing subwavelength-grating coupler for mid-IR ultra-thin suspended subwavelength-grating-cladding waveguide coupling. The results show high coupling efficiency and fiber alignment tolerance, paving the way for the development of mid-IR ultra-thin photonic integrated circuits.