AMORPHOUS THIN FILMS FOR MECHANICALLY FLEXIBLE, MULTI-MATERIAL INTEGRATED PHOTONICS
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Amorphous Thin Films for Mechanically Flexible, Multi-Material Integrated Photonics.pdf
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Author(s) • • • • • • • • •
Geiger, Sarah
Zerdoum, Aidan
Zhang, Ping
Du, Qingyang
Jia, Xinqiao
Novak, Spencer
Smith, Charmayne
Richardson, Kathleen
Musgraves, J. David
Li, Lan
Date Issued
May 2016
Journal
American Ceramic Society Bulletin
Publisher
American Ceramic Society
Citation
Li, Lan et al. "AMORPHOUS THIN FILMS FOR MECHANICALLY FLEXIBLE, MULTI-MATERIAL INTEGRATED PHOTONICS." American Ceramic Society Bulletin 95, 4: 34-40 © 2016 American Ceramic Society
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Flexible integrated photonics is a new technology which only started to burgeon in the past few years, opening up emerging applications ranging from flexible optical interconnects to conformal sensors on biological tissues. One of the most important factors dictating the performance
of these flexible devices is the material choice. Organic polymers are generally considered to be compatible with flexible substrates.
However, the low refractive indices of polymers (compared to
semiconductors) cannot provide the strong optical confinement
necessary for compact photonic integration. Besides polymers,
semiconductor NanoMembranes (NMs), thin slices of single crystal
semiconductors with sub-micron thickness, are being actively pursued
for photonic device integration on flexible substrates. Unlike their rigid bulk counterparts, NMs can be tightly bent without cracking, since surface strain induced by bending linearly scales with the membrane
thickness. To make photonic devices, NMs structures are usually first
patterned on a rigid substrate such as silicon. The fabricated structures are then picked up by a PDMS rubber stamp and transferred on
to the final flexible substrate.This multi-step hybrid process limits processing yield and throughput. Therefore, we turned to amorphous glasses – the material of choice for optics given their exceptionally low optical attenuation. In flexible photonics, using these non-crystalline materials also enables a monolithic fabrication route as they can be directly
deposited on to flexible substrates without resorting to epitaxial growth.
Specifically, we focus on chalcogenide glass materials and amorphous
TiO₂, as both can be deposited at relatively low temperature (250°C or
less) compatible with flexible substrate integration [1-5].
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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http://ceramics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/May-2016-BulletinTOC.pdf