Sub-1 dB/cm submicrometer-scale amorphous silicon waveguide for backend on-chip optical interconnect.

We demonstrate a submicrometer-scale hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) waveguide with a record low propagation loss of 0.60 ± 0.02 dB/cm because of the very low infrared optical absorption of our low defect a-Si:H film, the optimized waveguide structure and the fabrication process.