Organic emitters embedded in functional nanophotonic circuits

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Nanophotonic integrated circuits (NPICs) enable the realization of complex optical functionalities on a chip by joining waveguide-based components with full-fledged planar optical systems. When waveguiding materials with high refractive index contrast are employed, strong optical confinement allows for creating compact photonic circuits with small footprint and sub-wavelength features. By employing established fabrication techniques originally developed for the realization of integrated electrical circuits, these devices can be fabricated with high yield and reproducibility with potential for mass-market applications. NPICs find in particular widespread use for chipscale sensing and metrology, optical signal processing and also data communication with high bandwidth in optical interconnects.The most widely used silicon-based NPICs are predominantly passive devices when realized in a monolithic material system. The lack of active functionality, however, precludes realizing fully integrated systems which contain light sources, light detectors and routing elements, as required especially for functional circuits. To overcome these limitations, in this project, we will provide active functionalities to such passive inorganic material systems through hybrid integration with functional organic materials based on anthracene derivatives and co-crystals, to enable a new class of NPICs, as well as for providing new tools to study light-matter interactions.We will combine nanophotonic circuits based on broadband transparent silicon nitride with organic emitters by embedding molecular light sources directly into the near field of waveguide devices. Through evanescent coupling, strong interaction of the organic emitter with the underlying inorganic photonic architecture will allow for efficient light extraction into the nanophotonic circuitry. Using the rich toolbox of nanophotonics, cavity-enhanced coupling will provide tailored emission properties for spectral applications in the visible wavelength range. In addition, nanophotonic elements will be used for optical processing of the emitted signal directly on the chip and thus allow for all-photonic light source implementations with nanoscale footprint. We will study the performance of waveguide integrated light sources both in the high intensity regime, as well as in the few photon regime at cryogenic temperatures to investigate their suitability for single photon emission. The temporal analysis will be carried out on-chip using superconducting single photon detectors with high timing resolution. In combination with high performance on-chip filter elements, a powerful platform will be created to analyze the properties of hybrid inorganic-organic photonic systems with high timing resolution and sensitivity. The platform developed within this project will serve as a prototype scalable testbed for investigating light-emitting molecules and provide the tools for studying few photon statistics on a chip.