In situ Thermal Trimming of Waveguides in a Standard Active Silicon Photonics Platform
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866912709834964992 |
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| author | Xue, Tianyuan Wahn, Hannes Stalmashonak, Andrei Poon, Joyce K. S. Sacher, Wesley D. |
| author_facet | Xue, Tianyuan Wahn, Hannes Stalmashonak, Andrei Poon, Joyce K. S. Sacher, Wesley D. |
| contents | We present suspended heater structures fabricated in a standard C- and O-band silicon (Si) photonics platform that can achieve sufficiently high local temperatures to induce effective refractive index trimming of Si and silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides with 30 - 90 mW of applied electrical power. Following thermal trimming at moderate powers ($\leq$ 40 mW), maximum changes in the averaged waveguide effective refractive index of $-5.18 \times 10^{-3}$ and $-7.9 \times 10^{-4}$ are demonstrated in SiN and Si waveguides, respectively, at a wavelength of 1550 nm. At higher powers, SiN waveguides exhibit positive averaged effective index changes up to $\approx$0.02, demonstrating bi-directional index trimming. As an example application, we demonstrate bias point trimming of a carrier injection Mach-Zehnder switch. Through investigations of the origin of the thermal trimming effect, we hypothesize that changes in the silica (SiO$_2$) waveguide cladding may be a primary underlying mechanism at temperatures $\gtrsim$300$^{\circ}$C, with significant trimming of SiN waveguide cores occurring at larger temperatures $\gtrsim$510$^{\circ}$C. As the trimming experiments represent a form of accelerated thermal aging, we estimate the aging behavior of the suspended heaters by fitting and extrapolating the measured datasets to 100 - 200$^{\circ}$C operating temperatures over five years. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_13578 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | In situ Thermal Trimming of Waveguides in a Standard Active Silicon Photonics Platform Xue, Tianyuan Wahn, Hannes Stalmashonak, Andrei Poon, Joyce K. S. Sacher, Wesley D. Optics Applied Physics We present suspended heater structures fabricated in a standard C- and O-band silicon (Si) photonics platform that can achieve sufficiently high local temperatures to induce effective refractive index trimming of Si and silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides with 30 - 90 mW of applied electrical power. Following thermal trimming at moderate powers ($\leq$ 40 mW), maximum changes in the averaged waveguide effective refractive index of $-5.18 \times 10^{-3}$ and $-7.9 \times 10^{-4}$ are demonstrated in SiN and Si waveguides, respectively, at a wavelength of 1550 nm. At higher powers, SiN waveguides exhibit positive averaged effective index changes up to $\approx$0.02, demonstrating bi-directional index trimming. As an example application, we demonstrate bias point trimming of a carrier injection Mach-Zehnder switch. Through investigations of the origin of the thermal trimming effect, we hypothesize that changes in the silica (SiO$_2$) waveguide cladding may be a primary underlying mechanism at temperatures $\gtrsim$300$^{\circ}$C, with significant trimming of SiN waveguide cores occurring at larger temperatures $\gtrsim$510$^{\circ}$C. As the trimming experiments represent a form of accelerated thermal aging, we estimate the aging behavior of the suspended heaters by fitting and extrapolating the measured datasets to 100 - 200$^{\circ}$C operating temperatures over five years. |
| title | In situ Thermal Trimming of Waveguides in a Standard Active Silicon Photonics Platform |
| topic | Optics Applied Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13578 |