Lithium tantalate photonic integrated circuits for volume manufacturing.

Electro-optical photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on lithium niobate (LiNbO) have demonstrated the vast capabilities of materials with a high Pockels coefficient. They enable linear and high-speed modulators operating at complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor voltage levels to be used in applications including data-centre communications, high-performance computing and photonic accelerators for AI. However, industrial use of this technology is hindered by the high cost per wafer and the limited wafer size.

High density lithium niobate photonic integrated circuits.

Photonic integrated circuits have the potential to pervade into multiple applications traditionally limited to bulk optics. Of particular interest for new applications are ferroelectrics such as Lithium Niobate, which exhibit a large Pockels effect, but are difficult to process via dry etching. Here we demonstrate that diamond-like carbon (DLC) is a superior material for the manufacturing of photonic integrated circuits based on ferroelectrics, specifically LiNbO.

A heterogeneously integrated lithium niobate-on-silicon nitride photonic platform.

The availability of thin-film lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) and advances in processing have led to the emergence of fully integrated LiNbO electro-optic devices. Yet to date, LiNbO photonic integrated circuits have mostly been fabricated using non-standard etching techniques and partially etched waveguides, that lack the reproducibility achieved in silicon photonics. Widespread application of thin-film LiNbO requires a reliable solution with precise lithographic control.

Ultrafast tunable lasers using lithium niobate integrated photonics.

Early works and recent advances in thin-film lithium niobate (LiNbO) on insulator have enabled low-loss photonic integrated circuits, modulators with improved half-wave voltage, electro-optic frequency combs and on-chip electro-optic devices, with applications ranging from microwave photonics to microwave-to-optical quantum interfaces. Although recent advances have demonstrated tunable integrated lasers based on LiNbO (refs. ), the full potential of this platform to demonstrate frequency-agile, narrow-linewidth integrated lasers has not been achieved.

Protected generation of dissipative Kerr solitons in supermodes of coupled optical microresonators.

A photonic dimer composed of two evanescently coupled high- microresonators is a fundamental element of multimode soliton lattices. It has demonstrated a variety of emergent nonlinear phenomena, including supermode soliton generation and soliton hopping. Here, we present another aspect of dissipative soliton generation in coupled resonators, revealing the advantages of this system over conventional single-resonator platforms.

Low-Loss Integrated Nanophotonic Circuits with Layered Semiconductor Materials.

Monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides with direct bandgaps are emerging candidates for optoelectronic devices, such as photodetectors, light-emitting diodes, and electro-optic modulators. Here we report a low-loss integrated platform incorporating molybdenum ditelluride monolayers with silicon nitride photonic microresonators. We achieve microresonator quality factors >3 × 10 in the telecommunication O- to E-bands.