Towards next Generation UV Optical Waveguides

Information processing, sensing and life science technologies are currently subject to a revolution driven by integrated photonics that promises high sensitivities and low-power consumption. Photonics based on silicon and silicon nitride cover well the infrared and visible spectrum of light, respectively, and even allow for a low-cost co-integration with complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS) electronics. However, these technologies do not cover the UV part of the spectrum which is important for many emerging technologies such as biosensing or ion quantum computing. NEXG-UV will innovate a next generation UV-photonics platform based on Alumina,

public which is not only transparent in the UV-spectrum and features a great power capacity but also is compatible with large-scale fabrication of the CMOS platforms. Contrary, to prior attempts we will realize alumina photonic devices with smooth sidewalls and surfaces. Like copper patterning of the CMOS back-end, we will make use of chemical mechanical polishing in combination with a dry-etched dielectric template and high-aspect ratio deposition techniques such as ALD. This will enable photonic elements with small-feature sizes, large scale aspect-ratios and especially smooth surface to supress Rayleigh scattering that normally dominates losses at shorts wavelengths. This will have a significant impact for instance in quantum computation on trapped ion qubit systems and in life sciences on label free sensing/detection of biomolecules.