Loss reduction in silicon nanophotonic waveguide micro-bends through etch profile improvement

Single mode silicon photonic wire waveguides allow low-loss sharp micro-bends, which enables compact photonic devices and circuits. The circuit compactness is achieved at the cost of loss induced by micro-bends, which can seriously affect the device performance. The bend loss strongly depends on the bend radius, polarization, waveguide dimension and profile. In this paper, we present the effect of waveguide profile on the bend loss. We present waveguide profile improvement with optimized etch chemistry and the role of etch chemistry in adapting the etch profile of silicon is investigated. We experimentally demonstrate that by making the waveguide sidewalls vertical, the bend loss can be reduced up to 25% without affecting the propagation loss of the photonic wires. The bend loss of a 2 mu m bend has been reduced from 0.039dB/90 degrees bend to 0.028dB/90 degrees bend by changing the sidewall angle from 81 to 90, respectively. The propagation loss of 2.7 +/- 0.1dB/cm and 3 +/- 0.09dB/cm was observed for sloped and vertical photonic wires respectively was obtained. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.