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

SBIR 第一阶段：使用平面波导线圈和集成光子电路的硅光子光学陀螺仪

• 批准号: 2052114
• 负责人: Mike Horton
• 金额: $ 25.58万
• 依托单位: ANELLO PHOTONICS INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-04-01 至 2022-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2052114&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Silicon; Photonic; Optical

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.

该小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是通过经济实惠的高精度仪器提高自主系统的安全性和可靠性。 由于部件成本高昂和大量的手工组装，高精度惯性导航设备的改进历来缓慢，系统价格实际上在上涨，而不是像大多数其他高科技产品那样下降。 价格实惠且高精度的陀螺仪将为自主系统应用打开 10 B 美元的市场机会，并将为 2 B 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用于消费电子产品、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型3D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度的结构，其光学损耗约为每米 100 dB，这使得它们不适合制造长陀螺仪波导。 陀螺仪波导通常需要长度超过 40 米的螺旋传感波导，以产生足够的萨格纳克相位以实现高性能操作。 此外，在每个芯片适合更多传感区域的紧密节距波导与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。 该 SBIR 将展示一种新颖的 3D 带隙结构和工艺方法，可密集封装超低损耗波导，与当今标准 CMOS 工艺中的传统氮化硅波导方法相比，光学损耗可提高约 400 倍，波导密度可提高 4 倍。 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器件的关键使能技术。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。