Ion beam irradiation induced fabrication of silicon photonics - from 2D to 3D

Abstract

A newly developed micro and nano silicon machining process via ion beam irradiation will be applied to fabrications of silicon photonics in 2D and 3D on bulk silicon and SOI platforms. Firstly, different etching behaviors of p-type silicon after high (MeV) and low (100 keV) energy ion beam irradiations were studied. Then, fabrications of microdisk and microring resonators with or without waveguides integrated and Y-shape beam splitters, using a direct proton beam writing or a large area irradiation with a photoresist mask on top, followed by a single electrochemical etching step on bulk silicon wafers were demonstrated. Furthermore, with an additional irradiation step with a different energy to 2D Y-shape splitters, a 3D beam splitter was also achieved on bulk silicon. Applying this process to SOI platforms, vertically coupled waveguides and waveguide-resonators were fabricated by a normally used RIE combined with an aligned ion beam irradiation followed by electrochemical etching.