Metamaterial-Engineered Silicon Beam Splitter Fabricated with Deep UV Immersion Lithography

Subwavelength grating (SWG) metamaterials have garnered a great interest for their singular capability to shape the material properties and the propagation of light, allowing the realization of devices with unprecedented performance. However, practical SWG implementations are limited by fabrication constraints, such as minimum feature size, that restrict the available design space or compromise compatibility with high-volume fabrication technologies. Indeed, most successful SWG realizations so far relied on electron-beam lithographic techniques, compromising the scalability of the approach. Here, we report the experimental demonstration of an SWG metamaterial engineered beam splitter fabricated with deep-ultraviolet immersion lithography in a 300-mm silicon-on-insulator technology. The metamaterial beam splitter exhibits high performance over a measured bandwidth exceeding 186 nm centered at 1550 nm. These results open a new route for the development of scalable silicon photonic circuits exploiting flexible metamaterial engineering.

Automated summary

Subwavelength grating (SWG) metamaterials have attracted great interest for their ability to shape material properties and light propagation, but practical implementations are limited by fabrication constraints. By using deep-ultraviolet lithography, an SWG metamaterial engineered beam splitter was successfully fabricated in silicon-on-insulator technology, demonstrating high performance and opening up new possibilities for scalable silicon photonic circuits.