Integrated photonics on thin-film lithium niobate

Lithium niobate (LN), an outstanding and versatile material, has influenced our daily life for decades-from enabling high-speed optical communications that form the backbone of the Internet to realizing radio-frequency filtering used in our cell phones. This half-century-old material is currently embracing a revolution in thin-film LN integrated photonics. The successes of manufacturing wafer-scale, high-quality thin films of LN-on-insulator (LNOI) and breakthroughs in nanofabrication techniques have made high-performance integrated nanophotonic components possible. With rapid development in the past few years, some of these thin-film LN devices, such as optical modulators and nonlinear wavelength converters, have already outperformed their legacy counterparts realized in bulk LN crystals. Furthermore, the nanophotonic integration has enabled ultra-low-loss resonators in LN, which has unlocked many novel applications such as optical frequency combs and quantum transducers. In this review, we cover-from basic principles to the state of the art-the diverse aspects of integrated thin-film LN photonics, including the materials, basic passive components, and various active devices based on electro-optics, all-optical nonlinearities, and acousto-optics. We also identify challenges that this platform is currently facing and point out future opportunities. The field of integrated LNOI photonics is advancing rapidly and poised to make critical impacts on a broad range of applications in communication, signal processing, and quantum information. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America

Automated summary

Lithium niobate is a versatile material that plays a significant role in daily life, particularly in the fields of optical communications and photonics. Thin-film lithium niobate integrated photonics is currently undergoing a revolution, enabling high-performance nanophotonic components such as optical modulators and nonlinear wavelength converters.