A strong electro-optically active lead-free ferroelectric integrated on silicon

The development of silicon photonics could greatly benefit from the linear electro-optical properties, absent in bulk silicon, of ferroelectric oxides, as a novel way to seamlessly connect the electrical and optical domain. Of all oxides, barium titanate exhibits one of the largest linear electro-optical coefficients, which has however not yet been explored for thin films on silicon. Here we report on the electro-optical properties of thin barium titanate films epitaxially grown on silicon substrates. We extract a large effective Pockels coefficient of r(eff) = 148 pm V-1, which is five times larger than in the current standard material for electro-optical devices, lithium niobate. We also reveal the tensor nature of the electro-optical properties, as necessary for properly designing future devices, and furthermore unambiguously demonstrate the presence of ferroelectricity. The integration of electro-optical active films on silicon could pave the way towards power-efficient, ultra-compact integrated devices, such as modulators, tuning elements and bistable switches.