Germanium-based integrated photonics from near-to mid-infrared applications

Delphine Marris-Morini (1) , Vladyslav Vakarin (1) , Joan Manel Ramírez (1) , Qiankun Liu (1) , Andrea Ballabio (2) , Jacopo Frigerio (2) , Miguel Montesinos (1) , Carlos Alonso-Ramos (1) , Xavier Le Roux (1) , Samuel Serna (1) , Daniel Benedikovic (1) , Daniel Chrastina (2) , Laurent Vivien (1) , Giovanni Isella (2)

1 C2N (UMR_9001) - Centre de Nanosciences et Nanotechnologies
2 POLIMI - Politecnico di Milano [Milan]

Germanium (Ge) has played a key role in silicon photonics as an enabling material for datacom applications. Indeed, the unique properties of Ge have been leveraged to develop high performance integrated photodectors, which are now mature devices. Ge is also very useful for the achievement of compact modulators and monolithically integrated laser sources on silicon. Interestingly, research efforts in these domains also put forward the current revolution of mid-IR photonics. Ge and Ge-based alloys also present strong advantages for mid-infrared photonic platform such as the extension of the transparency window for these materials, which can operate at wavelengths beyond 8 μm. Different platforms have been proposed to take benefit from the broad transparency of Ge up to 15 μm, and the main passive building blocks are now being developed. In this review, we will present the most relevant Ge-based platforms reported so far that have led to the demonstration of several passive and active building blocks for mid-IR photonics. Seminal works on mid-IR optical sensing using integrated platforms will also be reviewed.

Mots clés: mid- infrared; absorption spectroscopy; silicon photonics; germanium; datacom

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Delphine Marris-Morini, Vladyslav Vakarin, Joan Manel Ramírez, Qiankun Liu, Andrea Ballabio, et al.. Germanium-based integrated photonics from near-to mid-infrared applications. Nanophotonics, 2018, 7 (11), pp.1781-1793. ⟨10.1515/nanoph-2018-0113⟩. ⟨hal-02376785⟩