| AVS 66th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Complex Oxides: Fundamental Properties and Applications Focus Topic | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session OX+EM+MI+SS-WeM |
| Session: | Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Complex Oxide Surfaces and Interfaces |
| Presenter: | Alexander Demkov, University of Texas at Austin |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Si photonics is a hybrid technology combining semiconductor logic with fast broadband optical communications and optical information technologies. With the increasing bandwidth requirement in computing and signal processing, the inherent limitations in metallic interconnection are seriously threatening the future of traditional IC industry. Silicon photonics can provide a low-cost approach to overcome the bottleneck of the high data rate transmission by replacing the original electronic integrated circuits with photonic integrated circuits. The development has proceeded along several avenues including mounting optical devices based on III-V semiconductors and/or LiNbO3 (LNO) on Si chips, incorporation of active optical impurities into Si, and utilization of stimulated Raman scattering in Si. All these approaches have had limited success. Recently, another path to Si photonics through epitaxial integration of transition metal oxide films was demonstrated when an effective electro-optic (Pockels) coefficient of BaTiO3 ( BTO) films epitaxially grown on Si via an SrTiO3 buffer was reported to be an order of magnitude larger than that in commercially-available LNO modulators. More generally, epitaxial growth of SrTiO3 on Si(001) enables monolithic integration of many functional perovskite oxides on Si, including ferroelectric BTO, ferromagnetic LaCoO3, photocatalytic TiO2 and CoO, and many others.
In this talk, I will focus on two materials systems integrated on Si (001) and well-suited for implementation in the next-generation optical technologies: SrTiO3/LaAlO3 quantum wells and Pockels-active BTO thin film heterostructures. Both materials systems are promising for use in a wide variety of optical and electro-optical devices central to integrated photonic technologies, including quantum cascade lasers, photodetectors, electro-optic modulators and switches. The resulting devices achieve refractive index tuning with power consumption many orders of magnitude less than previously reported. Taken together, these two approached will hopefully open the door for the development of new kinds of optical and electro-optical devices for use in integrated photonics technologies.