Ng, D.K.T.; Qian Wang; Kim-Peng Lim; Jing Pu; Kun Tang; Yicheng Lai; Chee-Wei Lee; Seng-Tiong Ho, "Effects of SiO2 hard masks on si nanophotonic waveguide loss for photonic device integration," in Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE , vol.26, no.1, pp.70-73, Jan.1, 2014 doi: 10.1109/LPT.2013.2287276
Abstract:
As the basic building block for photonic device integration, silicon nanophotonic waveguide requires low-loss propagation for high-performance ultra-compact photonic device. We experimentally study silicon dioxide hard masks grown by two different methods, i.e., thermal oxidation and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition for silicon nano-waveguides fabrication and their effects on the propagation loss. It is found that the denser and smoother quality of thermally grown silicon dioxide increases the etch selectivity against silicon and reduces the line edge roughness transferred to the silicon nano-waveguide sidewalls, hence resulting in a lower loss as compared to the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon dioxide hard mask. With thermally grown silicon dioxide as a hard mask, the silicon nano-waveguides loss can be halved for a 650 nm wide nano-waveguide, and the loss is comparable to a waveguide fabricated with a resist etch mask.
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