Amorphous metal oxide mixtures for high-Q integrated nonlinear photonics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Carollo, Alexa R., Dan, Atasi, Liu, Haixin, Carlson, David R., Black, Jennifer A., Papp, Scott B.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Carollo, Alexa R.
Dan, Atasi
Liu, Haixin
Carlson, David R.
Black, Jennifer A.
Papp, Scott B.
author_facet Carollo, Alexa R.
Dan, Atasi
Liu, Haixin
Carlson, David R.
Black, Jennifer A.
Papp, Scott B.
contents Choice of material is ubiquitous in integrated photonics to design device properties, whereas changing material composition is much less common. With phase matching as an additional objective, constraints in depositing and patterning thin films limit the use of integrated nonlinear photonics to only select materials. Here, we explore an amorphous metal oxide mixture of titania (TiO2) and tantala (Ta2O5) in which material composition is a tool to enhance and customize photonics properties. In particular, the inclusion of titania reduces the oxygen-defect density in a tantala film, while maintaining a comparable Kerr nonlinear index. With ion-beam sputtering at room temperature, we deposit a thick, ultralow-loss titania-tantala film, and we nanopattern it to create microresonator frequency combs. Titania-tantala microresonators offer lower loss, higher index of refraction, and reduced optical absorption and photorefractive effects. Specifically, the titania-tantala mixture enables microresonator quality factor up to $10^7$ and a direct factor of 1.7 reduction in optical absorption. Our work demonstrates that composition in metal-oxide mixtures is a design parameter alongside the nanofabrication process and photonics design for integrated nonlinear photonics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_14887
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Amorphous metal oxide mixtures for high-Q integrated nonlinear photonics
Carollo, Alexa R.
Dan, Atasi
Liu, Haixin
Carlson, David R.
Black, Jennifer A.
Papp, Scott B.
Optics
Applied Physics
Choice of material is ubiquitous in integrated photonics to design device properties, whereas changing material composition is much less common. With phase matching as an additional objective, constraints in depositing and patterning thin films limit the use of integrated nonlinear photonics to only select materials. Here, we explore an amorphous metal oxide mixture of titania (TiO2) and tantala (Ta2O5) in which material composition is a tool to enhance and customize photonics properties. In particular, the inclusion of titania reduces the oxygen-defect density in a tantala film, while maintaining a comparable Kerr nonlinear index. With ion-beam sputtering at room temperature, we deposit a thick, ultralow-loss titania-tantala film, and we nanopattern it to create microresonator frequency combs. Titania-tantala microresonators offer lower loss, higher index of refraction, and reduced optical absorption and photorefractive effects. Specifically, the titania-tantala mixture enables microresonator quality factor up to $10^7$ and a direct factor of 1.7 reduction in optical absorption. Our work demonstrates that composition in metal-oxide mixtures is a design parameter alongside the nanofabrication process and photonics design for integrated nonlinear photonics.
title Amorphous metal oxide mixtures for high-Q integrated nonlinear photonics
topic Optics
Applied Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14887