Silicon Photonic Bragg Gratings

Abstract

Silicon photonics, with great potential for bringing together two technological areas that have transformed the last century—electronics and photonics—is gaining significant momentum because it allows photonic devices to be made cheaply using complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication techniques and integrated with electronic chips. This chapter discusses the recent development of silicon photonic Bragg gratings, starting from the simple uniform gratings to applications in more complex grating devices. It provides insight into some practical issues and challenges involved with the design and fabrication. The chapter also discusses two waveguide structures that are most commonly used for integrated Bragg gratings: strip waveguides and rib waveguides. The integration of Bragg gratings in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides was first demonstrated by Murphy et al. in 2001. In terms of fabrication, electron-beam lithography has been used extensively for the fabrication of SOI Bragg gratings. It can make features in the nanometer regime, which is especially important for small corrugations.