Magneto-Optical Thin Films for On-Chip Monolithic Integration of Non-Reciprocal Photonic Devices

Lei Bi; Juejun Hu; Peng Jiang; Hyun Suk Kim; Dong Hun Kim; Mehmet Cengiz Onbasli; Gerald F Dionne; Caroline A Ross

doi:10.3390/ma6115094

Magneto-Optical Thin Films for On-Chip Monolithic Integration of Non-Reciprocal Photonic Devices

Materials (Basel). 2013 Nov 8;6(11):5094-5117. doi: 10.3390/ma6115094.

Authors

Lei Bi¹, Juejun Hu², Peng Jiang³, Hyun Suk Kim⁴, Dong Hun Kim⁵, Mehmet Cengiz Onbasli⁶, Gerald F Dionne⁷, Caroline A Ross⁸

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 4 Sec. 2 Jianshe N. Street, Chengdu 610054, China. bilei@uestc.edu.cn.
² Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Delaware, 305 DuPont Hall, Newark, DE 19716, USA. hujuejun@udel.edu.
³ Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. peng0469@gmail.com.
⁴ Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. hskimkim@gmail.com.
⁵ Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. rogercop@mit.edu.
⁶ Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. onbasli@mit.edu.
⁷ Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. dionne@ll.mit.edu.
⁸ Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. caross@mit.edu.

Abstract

Achieving monolithic integration of nonreciprocal photonic devices on semiconductor substrates has been long sought by the photonics research society. One way to achieve this goal is to deposit high quality magneto-optical oxide thin films on a semiconductor substrate. In this paper, we review our recent research activity on magneto-optical oxide thin films toward the goal of monolithic integration of nonreciprocal photonic devices on silicon. We demonstrate high Faraday rotation at telecommunication wavelengths in several novel magnetooptical oxide thin films including Co substituted CeO₂_-δ, Co- or Fe-substituted SrTiO_3-_δ, as well as polycrystalline garnets on silicon. Figures of merit of 3~4 deg/dB and 21 deg/dB are achieved in epitaxial Sr(Ti_0.2Ga_0.4Fe_0.4)O_3-_δ and polycrystalline (CeY₂)Fe₅O₁₂ films, respectively. We also demonstrate an optical isolator on silicon, based on a racetrack resonator using polycrystalline (CeY₂)Fe₅O₁₂/silicon strip-loaded waveguides. Our work demonstrates that physical vapor deposited magneto-optical oxide thin films on silicon can achieve high Faraday rotation, low optical loss and high magneto-optical figure of merit, therefore enabling novel high-performance non-reciprocal photonic devices monolithically integrated on semiconductor substrates.

Keywords: magnetic oxides; magneto-optics; monolithic integration; optical isolator; optical resonator; thin films.

Publication types

Review