2021/04/17 by Chao Xiang, Joel Guo, Warren Jin +13 · 12 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors #Laser #Laser linewidth #Materials science #Optics #Optoelectronics #Photonic and Optical Devices #Photonic integrated circuit #Photonics #Physics #Resonator #Semiconductor #Semiconductor laser theory #Silicon #Silicon nitride #Silicon photonics #Waveguide #physics.app-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-021-26804-9
published in Nature Communications 12(1), 6650 (Nature Portfolio) · 8 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2021/04/17 · openalex publication_date 2021/11/17 · arxiv updated 2022/01/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides with ultra-low optical loss enable integrated photonic applications including low noise, narrow linewidth lasers, chip-scale nonlinear photonics, and microwave photonics. Lasers are key components to SiN photonic integrated circuits (PICs), but are difficult to fully integrate with low-index SiN waveguides due to their large mismatch with the high-index III-V gain materials. The recent demonstration of multilayer heterogeneous integration provides a practical solution and enabled the first-generation of lasers fully integrated with SiN waveguides. However, a laser with high device yield and high output power at telecommunication wavelengths, where photonics applications are clustered, is still missing, hindered by large mode transition loss, non-optimized cavity design, and a complicated fabrication process. Here, we report high-performance lasers on SiN with tens of milliwatts output power through the SiN waveguide and sub-kHz fundamental linewidth, addressing all the aforementioned issues. We also show Hertz-level fundamental linewidth lasers are achievable with the developed integration techniques. These lasers, together with high-Q SiN resonators, mark a milestone towards a fully integrated low-noise silicon nitride photonics platform. This laser should find potential applications in LIDAR, microwave photonics and coherent optical communications.