High-Quality Silicon Nitride CMOS Photonic Devices

In this letter, high-quality silicon nitride (SiN) devices are demonstrated for the first time in a monolithic complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) photonic platform with a hybrid silicon (Si)-SiN capability. Device demonstrations include a racetrack resonator with quality factor (Q)
$\approx ~10^{ {5}}$
and a coupled resonator-based wavelength filter with an insertion loss of 1.78 dB and extinction ratio of 6.88 dB. Although high-quality SiN devices are demonstrated in multiple foundries, the ability to monolithically co-integrate these devices with Si-based detectors and other electronic circuits will enable a wide range of system-level applications requiring low loss, high Q, and low-thermal sensitivity in a wide range of wavelengths from visible to infrared.