SBIR Phase I: Silicon Photonic Optical Gyroscope using Planar Waveguide Coil and Integrated Photonics Circuit

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是使用负担得起的高精度仪器提高自主系统的安全性和可靠性。由于高昂的组件成本和大量的手工组装，高精度惯性导航设备的改进传统上一直很缓慢，系统价格实际上是上升的，而不是像大多数其他高科技产品那样下降。一款价格实惠但高精度的陀螺仪将在自主系统应用方面打开一个价值100亿美元的市场机会，它将为价值20亿美元的现有高性能惯性导航市场提供颠覆性的、更紧凑的新技术。可能的市场应用包括消费电子、汽车安全系统、工业机器人和国家安全系统的传感器。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将开发一种新的3-D氮化硅带隙波导，以实现小型、高精度集成光学陀螺仪。传统上，片上氮化硅波导是短厘米长的结构，其光学损耗约为每米100分贝，这使得它们不适合制作长陀螺仪波导。陀螺仪波导通常需要长度大于40米的螺旋传感波导，才能产生足够的Sagnac相位来执行操作。此外，在每个管芯适合更多传感面积的紧密间距波导和相邻波导螺旋轨道之间的光学相位耦合产生的误差之间存在权衡。这款SBIR将展示一种新型的3-D带隙结构和工艺方法，用于密集封装超低损耗波导，这将使光学损耗提高约400倍，将波导密度提高4倍，而目前标准的CMOS工艺采用的是传统的氮化硅波导方法。第一阶段的成果是小型集成光学陀螺仪以及其他需要低损耗片上光波导的光子设备的关键使能技术。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is improving the safety and reliability of autonomous systems with affordable high-precision instruments. Due to high component cost and extensive manual assembly, improvements in high-precision inertial navigation equipment has traditionally been slow, with system prices actually increasing instead of decreasing as in most other high-technology products. An affordable yet highly accurate gyroscope will open a $10 B market opportunity in autonomous systems applications, and it will provide disruptive, more compact new technology into the $2 B existing high-performance inertial navigation market. Possible market applications include sensors for consumer electronics, automotive safety systems, industrial robots, and national security systems.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a new 3-D Silicon Nitride bandgap waveguide to enable small, high-precision integrated optical gyroscopes. Traditionally, on-chip Silicon Nitride waveguides are short centimeter length structures with optical loss on the order of a 100 dB per meter making them unsuitable to fabricate long gyroscope waveguides. Gyroscope waveguides typically require a spiraled sensing waveguide greater than 40 meters long to generate the sufficient Sagnac Phase for performant operation. Additionally, there is a trade-off between tight pitch waveguides that fit more sensing area per die, and the errors generated from optical phase coupling between neighboring waveguide spiral tracks. This SBIR will demonstrate a novel 3-D bandgap structure and process methodology to densely pack an ultra-low loss waveguide that will enable an approximate 400x improvement in optical loss and a 4x improvement in waveguide density versus conventional Silicon Nitride waveguide approaches found in today’s standard CMOS process. The results of the Phase I is a key-enabling technology for small integrated optical gyroscopes as well as other photonic devices that require low loss on-chip optical waveguides.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.