Sandwiched Hybrid Waveguide Platform for Integrated Photonics Application

Abstract: We propose and demonstrate a hybrid waveguide platform using layered amorphous silicon and silicon nitride. The waveguide offers more degrees of freedom to design waveguides with desired confinement, effective index and polarization birefringence. Unlike single core material, the proposed waveguide offers design flexibility, and light confinement in the layers is polarization-dependent. We present a detailed waveguide design and analysis of efficient fiber-chip grating couplers with a coupling efficiency of -3.27 dB and -8 dB for $TE$ and $TM$ polarization, respectively. The couplers offer a 3dB bandwidth of 100 nm. Furthermore, we demonstrate excitation of TE and TM modes exploiting the polarization-dependent confinement using thermo-optic characteristics of a ring resonator.