Title:  A Low-Cost High-Quality Crystalline Silicon-Carbide-on-Insulator Platform for Integrated Photonics Applications

Committee: 

Dr. Adibi, Advisor

Dr. Ralph, Chair

Dr. Chang

Abstract:

The objective of this research is to develop a low-cost high-quality crystalline SiC-on-insulator (SiCOI) material platform and integrated photonic devices as basic building-block components that meet the emerging needs of integrated photonics applications in the fields of neuroscience, nonlinear photonics, and quantum information science. Despite the increasing interests in SiC-based integrated photonics, there is a lack of high-quality SiC material platform that is both reliable and cost-effective for integrated photonic applications. The proposed techniques lead to a SiCOI platform that enables integrated SiC microresonators with record-high quality-factors (Qs) working over a wide bandwidth, from visible to near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths, which can dramatically enhance light-matter interactions in SiC. Towards the goal of achieving a fully integrated SiC photonics platform, we also introduce reconfigurable devices, integrated laser sources, and on-chip single-photon detectors into the SiCOI platform. These efforts are intended to realize wafer-level manufacturing of SiC devices, paving the way toward commercialization of integrated photonic solutions based on SiC.