Fabrication and characterization of CMOS- compatible integrated tungsten heaters for thermo-optic tuning in silicon photonics devices

We present fabrication and characterization of tungsten (W) heaters for thermo-optic tuning on silicon-on-insulator (SOI). The waferscale fabrication of these thermal tuners was done using standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) back-end fabrication materials and processes. Static and transient characterizations of heaters are presented. ©2014 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (250.5300) Photonic integrated circuits; (160.6840) Thermo-optical materials; (220.4241) Nanostructure fabrication; (130.4815) Optical switching devices. References and links 1. J. Komma, C. Schwarz, G. Hofmann, D. Heinert, and R. Nawrodt, “Thermo-optic coefficient of silicon at 1550 nm and cryogenic temperatures,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 101(4), 041905 (2012). 2. G. V. Treyz, “Silicon Mach-Zehnder waveguide interferometers operating at 1.3 mu m,” Electron. Lett. 27(2), 118–120 (1991). 3. G. Cocorullo and I. Rendina, “Thermo-optical modulation at 1.5 mu m in silicon etalon,” Electron. Lett. 28(1), 83–85 (1992). 4. B. Guha, A. Gondarenko, and M. Lipson, “Minimizing temperature sensitivity of silicon Mach-Zehnder interferometers,” Opt. Express 18(3), 1879–1887 (2010). 5. J. Teng, P. Dumon, W. Bogaerts, H. Zhang, X. Jian, X. Han, M. Zhao, G. Morthier, and R. Baets, “Athermal Silicon-on-insulator ring resonators by overlaying a polymer cladding on narrowed waveguides,” Opt. Express 17(17), 14627–14633 (2009). 6. H. Yu, M. Pantouvaki, S. Dwivedi, P. Verheyen, G. Lepage, R. Baets, W. Bogaerts, P. Absil, and J. Van Campenhout, “Compact Thermally Tunable Silicon Racetrack Modulators Based on an Asymmetric Waveguide,” IEEE Photonic. Tech. L. 25(2), 159–162 (2013). 7. I. Shubin, G. Li, X. Zheng, Y. Luo, H. Thacker, J. Yao, N. Park, A. V. Krishnamoorthy, and J. E. Cunningham, “Integration, processing and performance of low power thermally tunable CMOS-SOI WDM resonators,” Opt. Quantum Electron. 44(12-13), 589–604 (2012). 8. M. R. Watts, J. Sun, C. DeRose, D. C. Trotter, R. W. Young, and G. N. Nielson, “Adiabatic thermo-optic MachZehnder switch,” Opt. Lett. 38(5), 733–735 (2013). 9. L. Cao, A. A. Aboketaf, and S. F. Preble, “CMOS compatible micro-oven heater for efficient thermal control of silicon photonic devices,” Opt. Commun. 305, 66–70 (2013). 10. T. Barwicz, M. A. Popović, F. Gan, M. S. Dahlem, C. W. Holzwarth, P. T. Rakich, E. P. Ippen, F. X. Kärtner, and H. I. Smith, “Reconfigurable silicon photonic circuits for telecommunication applications,” Proc. SPIE 6872, 68720Z (2008). 11. J. Xia, J. Yu, Z. Wang, Z. Fan, and S. Chen, “Low power 2×2 thermo-optic SOI waveguide switch fabricated by anisotropy chemical etching,” Opt. Commun. 232(1-6), 223–228 (2004). 12. D. Dai, L. Yang, S. He, and S. Member, “Ultrasmall thermally tunable microring resonator with a submicrometer heater on Si nanowires,” J. Lightwave Technol. 26(6), 704–709 (2008). 13. J. Van Campenhout, W. M. J. Green, S. Assefa, and Y. A. Vlasov, “Integrated NiSi waveguide heaters for CMOS-compatible silicon thermo-optic devices,” Opt. Lett. 35(7), 1013–1015 (2010). 14. J. F. Song, Q. Fang, T. Y. Liow, H. Cai, M. B. Yu, G. Q. Lo, and D. L. Kwong, “High Efficiency Optical Switches with Heater-on-Slab (HoS) Structures,” in Optical Fiber Communication Conference/National Fiber #210772 $15.00 USD Received 1 May 2014; revised 10 Jun 2014; accepted 10 Jun 2014; published 16 Jun 2014 (C) 2014 OSA 1 July 2014 | Vol. 4, No. 7 | DOI:10.1364/OME.4.001383 | OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS 1383 Optic Engineers Conference 2011, OSA Technical Digest (CD) (Optical Society of America, 2011), paper OThM2. 15. A. Masood, M. Pantouvaki, D. Goossens, G. Lepage, P. Verheyen, D. Van Thourhout, P. Absil, and W. Bogaerts, “CMOS-compatible Tungsten Heaters for Silicon Photonic Waveguides,” in Group IV Photonics (GFP), 2012 IEEE 9th International Conference on, 2012, 234-236. 16. M. Quirk and J. Serda, “Metallization,” in Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology (Prentice Hall, 2001), pp. 293-333. 17. S. K. Selvaraja, P. Jaenen, W. Bogaerts, D. Van Thourhout, P. Dumon, and R. Baets, “Fabrication of Photonic Wire and Crystal Circuits in Silicon-on-Insulator Using 193nm Optical Lithography,” J. Lightwave Technol. 27(18), 4076–4083 (2009). 18. H. Yu, M. Pantouvaki, J. Van Campenhout, D. Korn, K. Komorowska, P. Dumon, Y. Li, P. Verheyen, P. Absil, L. Alloatti, D. Hillerkuss, J. Leuthold, R. Baets, and W. Bogaerts, “Performance tradeoff between lateral and interdigitated doping patterns for high speed carrier-depletion based silicon modulators,” Opt. Express 20(12), 12926–12938 (2012). 19. A. Masood, M. Pantouvaki, G. Lepage, P. Verheyen, J. Van Campenhout, P. Absil, D. Van Thourhout, and W. Bogaerts, “Comparison of heater architectures for thermal control of silicon photonic circuits,” in Group IV Photonics (GFP), 2013 IEEE 10th International Conference on, 2013, 83-84.