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Optical splitters are passive optical components, which have found applications in a wide range of telecom, sensing, medical and many other scientific areas.
Low-index contrast optical splitters (Silica-on-Silicon (SoS) based waveguide devices) feature many advantages such as low fiber coupling losses and low propagation losses. They are considered an attractive DWDM solution in the telecommunication for all optical signal processing in optical communication systems. Nowadays the steadily increasing data volume in communication networks is driven by a rapid proliferation of home-based and business computers, storage capacities, processing capabilities and the extensive availability of Internet. The challenge is to transfer high data volumes in short periods of time over high distances as lossless as possible. The task of the optical splitters in Fiber-to-the-x (FTTx) network is to split one optical signal in many identical signals bringing for example the same TV signal in different households. Of course, the more buildings can be served by one optical splitter the lower are the installation costs.
High-index contrast optical splitters (such as silicon, silicon nitride or polymer based waveguide devices) feature much smaller waveguide size compared to low index contrast splitters. Such compact devices can easily be implemented on-chip and have already been used in the development of optical sensors, devices for DNA diagnostics and for infrared spectroscopy.
We will present the latest achievements in the design of two mostly used optical splitters (MMI and Y-branch) and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, some applications of the splitters developed in the frame of various projects will be presented.
This work was carried out in the framework of the project PHOCOP (no. SK-AT-2017-0013) and NAMOPRISIN (no. SK-AT-2017-0005) from the Slovak research and development agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic and SK 16/2018 and 15/2018 from OeAD-GmbH.
Abstract: ams AG is a leading provider of sensing solutions developing semiconductor sensors in a wide variety of fields, with optical sensing as one of the key competences. Since integrated photonics is a promising technology for new sensor systems, ams AG has been developing processes for fully integrated CMOS-compatible photonic components based on Si3N4. This talk will provide an overview on the processing of basic photonic building blocks and their optical properties and performance. We will also give examples for applications in the fields of optical coherence tomography and opto-chemical gas sensing. In the 1980s photonics started its way for common use in telecommunication technology, using optical fiber technologies. In recent years, also a variety of photonic sensors has been proposed and developed. One of the major drawbacks of most of these photonic devices has been the lack of integration into existing (semiconductor) production processes, so far. This integration is feasible using SiN material systems to process monolithically integrated CMOS-compatible photonic sensors in the visible and near-infrared spectrum. We will present the basic processing steps for the SiN photonic technology, the development of some critical processing steps such as SiN deposition and SiN etching as well as several photonic components (waveguides, splitters, etc.) with their optical properties. One of the applications presented relates to optical coherence tomography (OCT), a fast growing imaging technique in ophthalmology. Drawbacks of existing OCT systems are their high costs as well as their bulkiness, which prevents a wider spread use of OCT systems.
One way to overcome both cost and size issues is to integrate optical and electrical components on a single chip.
Part of this work was carried out in the framework of the projects COHESION (funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), no. 848588), OCTCHIP (funded by the EU’ Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, no. 688173), and COLODOR (M-ERA.NET transnational Call 2015, funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), no.854066, and the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany).
Comparison of silicon nitride based 1x8 Y-branch splitters applying different waveguide structures
(2019)
This paper presents design, simulation and optimization of 1x8 Y-branch power splitters based on Si/SiO2/SiN/SiOx material platform. For the designs, two different waveguide structures were used, i.e. ridge and rib waveguides. The splitters were designed for 850 nm spectral optical window and the simulations were performed applying FEM and BPM methods in RSoft photonic tool. The aim of this work was to find minimum physical dimensions of the designed splitters occupying minimal space on PIC chip. The optimization was done with regards to high symmetrical splitting ratio and low insertion loss. Finally, the optical properties of both splitters were studied and compared with each other.