Near-infrared grating couplers for silicon nitride photonic wires

Abstract — Silicon nitride is a promising high-index material for dense photonic circuits and applications in the visible-midinfrared wavelength regime. Design, fabrication, and optical characterization of silicon nitride waveguides at visible-near-infrared wavelength are presented. Finally, design and experi-mental results are presented for the first time for linear and focused grating couplers (GCs) at near-infrared wavelength (900 nm) for plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon nitride wires (220 × 500 nm) and compared with theoretical simulations. An experimental efficiency of 5.7 and 6.5 dB and 1-dB bandwidth of 26 and 40 nm are reported for the linear and focused GCs, respectively. Index Terms — Gratings, integrated optics, optical materials, optical waveguides. I