CMOS-compatible, athermal silicon ring modulators clad with titanium dioxide

We present the design, fabrication and characterization of athermal nano-photonic silicon ring modulators. The athermalization method employs compensation of the silicon core thermo-optic contribution with that from the amorphous titanium dioxide (a-TiO2) overcladding with a negative thermo-optic coefficient. We developed a new CMOS-compatible fabrication process involving low temperature RF magnetron sputtering of high-density and low-loss a-TiO2 that can withstand subsequent elevated-temperature CMOS processes. Silicon ring resonators with 275 nm wide rib waveguide clad with a-TiO2 showed near complete athermalization and moderate optical losses. Small-signal testing of the micro-resonator modulators showed high extinction ratio and gigahertz bandwidth.