Silicon Carbide Microring Resonators for Integrated Nonlinear and Quantum Photonics Based on Optical Nonlinearities

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) electronics has seen a rapid development in industry over the last two decades due to its capabilities in handling high powers and high temperatures while offering a high saturated carrier mobility for power electronics applications. With the increased capacity in producing large-size, single-crystalline SiC wafers, it has recently been attracting attention from academia and industry to exploit SiC for integrated photonics owing to its large bandgap energy, wide transparent window, and moderate second-order optical nonlinearity, which is absent in other centrosymmetric silicon-based material platforms. SiC with various polytypes exhibiting second- and third-order optical nonlinearities are promising for implementing nonlinear and quantum light sources in photonic integrated circuits. By optimizing the fabrication processes of the silicon carbide-on-insulator platforms, researchers have exploited the resulting high-quality-factor microring resonators for various nonlinear frequency conversions and spontaneous parametric down-conversion in photonic integrated circuits. In this paper, we review the fundamentals and applications of SiC-based microring resonators, including the material and optical properties, the device design for nonlinear and quantum light sources, the device fabrication processes, and nascent applications in integrated nonlinear and quantum photonics.

Keywords

• silicon carbide-on-insulator
• integrated nonlinear and quantum photonics
• second harmonic generation
• four-wave mixing
• spontaneous parametric down-conversion