Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SiComb (CMOS compatible and ultra broadband on-chip SiC frequency comb)
Reporting period: 2020-10-01 to 2022-03-31
a united consortium is formed after large amounts of meetings and webinars. For WP1, both amorphous SiCOI stacks and 3C SiCOI stacks have been achieved. The amorphous SiCOI stacks are deposited by both plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) and physical vapour deposition (PVD), and they are device fabrication ready. For WP2, a standard mask layout and a stable processing flow to evaluate the materials received from WP1 have been established. So far PECVD deposited amorphous SiCOI stacks show the lowest material loss: 5~6dB/cm measured by a retrofitted prism coupler setup. The waveguide propagation loss is about 7~8 dB/cm, derived from the resonance of a microring resonator, which indicated the fabrication introduced extra loss is already as low as about 2dB/cm. Thermal-optical coefficient of amorphous SiCOI was studied and quantified, and a prototype for temperature control is fabricated. For WP3, references system design and preliminary components specification are investigated.