Si-based light emitter in an integrated photonic circuit for smart biosensor applications

The motivation for integrated Silicon-based optoelectronics is the creation of low-cost photonics for mass-market applications. Especially, the growing demand for sensitive biochemical sensors in the environmental control or medicine leads to the development of integrated high resolution sensors. Here we present initial results in the integration and butt-coupling of a Si-based light emitting device (LED) [1-3] to a waveguide into a photonic circuit. Our first approach deals with the design, fabrication and characterization of the dielectric high contrast waveguide as an important component, beside the LED, for the development of a Si-based biodetection system. In this work we demonstrate design examples of Si3N4/SiO2-waveguides, which were calculated using MATLAB, the effective index method (EIM) and the finite element method (FEM), with a 0.45 mu m thick and 0.7 mu m wide core which shows a high confinement factor of similar to 74% and coupling efficiency of similar to 66% at 1.55 mu m, respectively. The fabrication was done by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD), optical lithography and reactive ion etching (RIE). Additionally, we characterized the deposited layers via ellipsometry and the etched structures by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The obtained results establish principles for Si-based LED butt-coupling to a powerful optical waveguide-based interconnect with effective light absorption and an adequate coupling efficiency.