Planar waveguide devices on a silicon compatible technology platform

A silicon compatible technology platform based on silicon oxynitride thin film technology is discussed. This platform allows for various passive and active integrated optics applications in the fields of optical communication and sensing. In this approach, the basic building block is an optimized silicon oxynitride waveguide channel with excellent (optical) properties (e.g.: low loss, tunable refractive index contrast, highly uniform and reliable layer deposition). Since silicon oxynitride is intrinsically a passive material, this technology is combined with other materials, yielding active functionality (e.g.: erbium-doped optical amplifier materials, electro-optical materials such as zinc oxide or polymers, etc.). Amongst others, we will demonstrate and discuss the performance of a few integrated optical devices that have been realized on the basis of this hybrid approach.