Figure 3a shows the GO-coated integrated waveguides made from high-index doped silica glass [5], with a cross section of 2 µm × 1.5 µm. The integrated waveguide is surrounded by silica except that the upper cladding is removed to enable coating the waveguide with GO films. The GO films, with a thickness of about 2 nm per layer, were introduced on the top of the integrated waveguide in order to introduce light-material interaction with the evanescent field leaking from the integrated waveguide. The Kerr coefficient of GO is on the order of 10-15~10-14 m2/W [16, 19], which is slightly lower than that of graphene (~10–13 m2/W) [19, 32, 33], but still orders of magnitude higher than that of high-index doped silica glass (~10–19 m2/W) and silica (~10–20 m2/W) [5].The waveguides were fabricated via CMOS compatible processes [34, 35]. First, high-index doped silica glass films (n = ~1.60 at 1550 nm) were deposited using standard plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD), then patterned using deep UV photo-lithography and etched via reactive ion etching (RIE) to form waveguides with exceptionally low surface roughness. After that, silica glass (n = ~1.44 at 1550 nm) was deposited via PECVD and the upper cladding of the integrated waveguides was removed by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP). Finally, the GO film was coated on the top surface of the chip by a solution-based method that yields layer-by-layer deposition of GO films, as reported previously[20]. An image of the integrated waveguide incorporating two layers of GO is shown in Figure 3b, which illustrates that the morphology is good, leading to a high transmittance of the GO film on top of the integrated waveguide. The integration of GO onto the waveguide is confirmed by Raman spectroscopic measurements (Figure 3c) that show the representative D (1345 cm-1) and G (1590 cm-1) peaks of GO [16].
The FWM spectra of a 1.5-cm-long integrated waveguide without GO and with 2 layers of GO are shown in Figure 3d. For comparison, we kept the same pump power of ~30 dBm before the input of the waveguide, which corresponded to ~22 dBm pump power coupled into the waveguide. It can be seen that although the hybrid integrated waveguide had additional propagation loss (~2.6 dB), it clearly shows enhanced idler output powers as compared with the same waveguide without GO. The CE (defined as the ratio of the output power of the idler to the output power of the signal, i.e., Pout, idler/Pout, signal) of the integrated waveguide with and without GO were ~-47.1 dB and ~-56.6 dB, respectively, corresponding to a CE enhancement of ~9.5 dB for the hybrid integrated waveguide. After excluding the addtional propagation loss, the net CE enhancement (defined as the improvement of the output power of the idler for the same pump power coupled to the waveguide) is 6.9 dB. For the integrated waveguide coated with 1 to 5 layers of GO, zoom-in spectra of the generated idlers for the same pump power coupled to the waveguide (~22 dBm) are shown in Figure 3e. For the integrated waveguide coated with 1 and 2 layers of GO, there were positive net CE enhancements. When the number of GO layers was over 2, the net change in CE was negative. This is mainly due to the super-linear increase in propagation loss for increased numbers of GO layers as noted above. The output powers of the idler for various pump powers coupled to the waveguide without GO and with 2 layers of GO are shown in Figure 3f.
Figure 4a shows the SiN waveguide integrated with a GO film. SiN waveguides with a cross section of 1.6 µm × 0.66 µm were fabricated via annealing-free and crack-free processes that are compatible with CMOS fabrication [36, 37]. First, a SiN layer was deposited via low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) in two steps, with a 370-nm-thick layer for each, so as to control strain and to prevent cracks. In order to produce high-quality films, a tailored ultra-low deposition rate (< 2 nm/ min) was used. Waveguides were then formed via a combination of deep ultraviolet lithography and fluorine-based dry etching that yielded exceptionally low surface roughness. Next, a 3-µm thick silica upper cladding layer was deposited via high-density plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (HDP-PECVD) to avoid void formation. To enable the interaction between the GO films and the evanescent field leaking from the SiN waveguides, the silica upper cladding was removed using a perfectly selective CMP that left the top surface of the SiN waveguides exposed in air, with no SiN consumption and no remaining topography. Figure 4b shows a microscope image of a SiN waveguide patterned with 10 layers of GO, which illustrates the high transmittance and good morphology of the GO films. Figure 4b presents a scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of a GO film with up to 5 layers of GO monolayers, clearly showing the layered film structure. Figure 4c shows the measured Raman spectra of a SiN chip without GO and with 10 layers of uniformly coated GO films. The successful integration of GO films is confirmed by the presence of the representative D (1345 cm-1) and G (1590 cm-1) peaks of GO.
Figure 5 shows the experimental FWM optical spectra for the SiN waveguides uniformly coated with 1 and 2 layers of GO (Figure 5a-i) together with the FWM spectrum of the bare SiN waveguide. For comparison, we kept the same power of 23 dBm for both the pump and signal before the input of the waveguides, which corresponded to 18 dBm power for each coupled into the waveguides. The difference among the baselines of the spectra reflects the difference in waveguide propagation loss for different samples. It can be seen that although the hybrid waveguide with 1 layer of GO film had an additional propagation loss of ≈7.1 dB, it clearly shows enhanced idler output powers as compared with the bare SiN waveguide. The CE of the SiN waveguides without GO and with 1 layer of GO were ≈-65.7 dB and ≈-58.4 dB, respectively, corresponding to a CE enhancement of ≈7.3 dB for the hybrid waveguide. In contrast to the positive CE enhancement for the hybrid waveguide with 1 layer of GO, the change in CE for the hybrid waveguide with 2 layers of GO was negative.
Figure 5a-ii shows the FWM spectra of the SiN waveguides with 5 and 10 layers of patterned GO films. The coupled CW pump and signal power (18 dBm for each) was the same as that in Figure 5a-i. The SiN waveguides with patterned GO films also had an additional insertion loss as compared with the bare waveguide, while the results for both 5 and 10 GO layers show enhanced idler output powers. In particular, there is a maximum CE enhancement of ≈ 9.1 dB for the SiN waveguide patterned with 5 layers of GO, which is even higher than that for the uniformly coated waveguide with 1 layer of GO. This reflects the trade-off between FWM enhancement (which dominates for the patterned devices with a short GO coating length) and loss (which dominates for the uniformly coated waveguides with a much longer GO coating length) in the GO-coated SiN waveguides. Figure 5b shows the measured CE versus pump power for the uniformly coated and patterned devices, respectively. The plots show the average of three measurements on the same samples and the error bars reflect the variations, showing that the measured CE is repeatable. As the pump power was increased, the measured CE increased linearly with no obvious saturation for the bare SiN waveguide and all the hybrid waveguides, indicating the low TPA of both the SiN waveguides and the GO films. For the bare waveguide, the dependence of CE versus pump power shows a nearly linear relationship, with a slope rate of about 2 for the curve as expected from classical FWM theory [38]. For the GO-coated waveguides, the measured CE curves have shown slight deviations from the linear relationship with a slope rate of 2, particularly at high light powers. Figure 5c compares the CE of the hybrid waveguides with four different numbers of GO layers (i.e., 1, 2, 5, 10), where we see that the hybrid waveguide with an intermediate number of GO layers has the maximum CE. This reflects the trade-off between γ and loss in the hybrid waveguides, which both increase with GO layer number.