PIC: CMOS-compatible, monolithic, and high-performance optical isolators on silicon

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Optical isolators are optical diodes which only allow uni-directional transmission of light. They constitute an essential component in chip-scale photonic circuits, although their integration with photonic chips has been challenging due to material and processing incompatibility. The program seeks to develop an isolator solution for chip-scale photonic circuits which can be manufactured leveraging standard semiconductor microfabrication processes offered by the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics. Success of the project will have an immediate impact on fields such as optical communications, optical analog computing, and magnetooptical sensing. The scientific research will be tightly integrated with educational and outreach initiatives at MIT and the AIM Photonics Academy. We will also collaborate with the Lab for Education & Application Prototypes to develop both online interactive modules and hands-on experiments for K-12 students and workshop participants from academia, government, and industry around the globe. Technical: Optical isolators are essential optical components safeguarding the stable operation of lasers and photonic integrated circuits (PICs). None of the current approaches for on-chip optical isolation, however, meets the stringent demands for practical deployment of these devices in state-of-the-art PICs: high isolation ratio, minimal insertion loss, broadband operation, small footprint, passive operation, polarization diversity, as well as compatibility with scalable Si manufacturing. This program will lead to a transformative solution to this challenge by developing the first optical isolator on Si that fulfills all the aforementioned requirements. In addition to exploring device design and processing innovations to enable unprecedented high performance, the program will also validate scalable manufacturing and integration of the isolator device through prototyping at the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics) leveraging standard Si manufacturing processes, followed by backend-compatible monolithic deposition of magnetooptical garnet materials. This multi-faceted approach will provide a practical solution to bridge the large performance gap between current on-chip isolators and the target for their deployment in PICs and solve a longstanding challenge facing the integrated photonics community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.