On-chip amplifiers and lasers on the Al2O3 integrated photonics platform (Conference Presentation)

Amorphous Al2O3 is an attractive material for integrated photonics, providing both active and passive functionalities. Al2O3 exhibits high solubility for rare-earth ions with moderate quenching of luminescence, a wide transparency window (150-7000 nm) and low propagation loss. It is therefore a very attractive material for visible, near- and mid-IR on-chip active devices. We have developed two different integration procedures to integrate Al2O3 onto passive photonic platforms. A double photonic layer integration scheme permits the low-loss integration of rare-earth ion doped Al2O3 onto the Si3N4 photonic platform. A single photonic layer integration scheme, based on the photonic damascene process, permits the creation of active and passive regions at the same level on a wafer, with the consequent reduction of the number of fabrication steps compared to the vertical integration of two materials. On-chip amplifiers on Si3N4 with more than 10 dB of net gain at 1550 nm as well as the realization of narrow linewidth lasers on active-passive Al2O3 for label-free sensing applications will be discussed.