Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme
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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik
P 14: Poster: Plasmatechnologie
P 14.9: Poster
Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 16:30–19:00, Poster.III
Plasma etch challenges for technological fabrication of silicon photonic components — •Harald Richter1, Mirko Fraschke1, René Eisermann1, Steffen Marschmeyer1, David Stolarek1, Katrin Schulz1, Lars Zimmermann1,2, and Bernd Tillack1,2 — 1IHP, Im Technologiepark 25, 15234 Frankfurt (Oder) — 2Technische Universität Berlin, HFT 4, Einsteinufer 25, 10623 Berlin
For more than ten years, there has been an increasing interest in silicon as a material for use in integrated optoelectronics. The idea of a compact integration of photonic and electronic components is based on the compatibility of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) photonics with highly integrated microelectronic technologies. The essential building block of every photonic circuit is a waveguide. The transport of light by a waveguide is one main reason for light intensity loss. The minimization of propagation loss is the main goal in waveguide fabrication process development. Silicon roughness, critical dimension stability and side wall slope angles determine the silicon waveguide quality essentially. Finally, all these waveguide characteristics will be influenced by plasma etching performance. The present work is focused on plasma etch process development and optimization for different passive silicon photonic components (rib waveguides, nanowires, ring resonators, coupling structures and photonic crystals). Different hard masks for the several etch processes were tested and optimized. Experiments have shown the mask opening step is significant for preparation of high-quality silicon photonic modules.