Highly-Chirped Bragg Gratings for Integrated Silica Spectrometers

Abstract: A blazed chirped Bragg grating in a planar silica waveguide device was used to create an integrated diffractive element for a spectrometer. The grating diffracts light from a waveguide and creates a wavelength dependent focus in a manner similar to a bulk diffraction grating spectrometer. An external imaging system is used to analyse the light, later device iterations plan to integrate detectors to make a fully integrated spectrometer. Devices were fabricated with grating period chirp rates in excess of 100nm/mm, achieving a focal length of 5.5mm. Correction of coma aberrations resulted in a device with a footprint of 20mm x 10mm, a peak FWHM resolution of 1.8nm, a typical FWHM resolution of 2.6nm and operating with a 160nm bandwidth centered at 1550nm.