LiNbO3 Sub-Micron Film Technology- A New Approach to Guided Wave Nonlinear and Electro-optic Devices.

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ECS-0601339W. Steier, Univ. of Southern CaliforniaResearch and Its Intellectual Merit A new technology has recently been demonstrated for the fabrication of sub-micron thick LiNbO3 buried ridge waveguides using crystal ion slicing and wafer bonding. It was shown that the transferred layers have bulk crystalline quality and have identical optical and electro-optical properties as lithium niobate single crystals. These new LiNbO3 thin films and waveguides are the key to the next generation of electro-optical and nonlinear optical devices proposed here. Because of the large index contrast, waveguides can be designed with several micron bending radius and can be integrated with other high index optical platforms such as Si-on-insulator. For parametric oscillators and other NLO devices, reducing the mode size increases the conversion efficiency, reduces the interaction length, and limits the effect of optical loss. For modulators, Vp can be significantly reduced because of the reduced electrode spacing and the rf bandwidth can be significantly increased by matching the optical and microwave signal velocities. The research includes studies of periodic poling of the thin films, studies of EO micro-ring amplitude or phase modulators, investigation of high speed EO traveling wave modulators, parametric oscillators, amplifiers, and analysis and fabrication of photonic band gap engineered devices. The application of the crystal ion slicing thin film technology to other notable nonlinear materials such as KNbO3, KTiOPO4, KTiOAsO4, and Ba2NaNb5O15 will be investigated. Broader Impact on Diversity and Out-Reach in Engineering and Engineering EducationIn collaboration with the School of Engineering Diversity program and graduate fellowship program, we will bring minority undergraduates into the lab as merit scholars and an additional women graduate student into my laboratory. As part of the educational outreach program established by USC and LA Trade Tech to educate community college students in clean room and nano-fabrication technology, we will us this work as a leading edge example of nano-fabrication and the devices made possible.