Free-Standing Lithium Niobate Microring Resonators for Hybrid Integrated Optics

We report on the fabrication of free-standing microrings using ion-sliced lithium niobate thin films bonded by benzocyclobutene on a lithium niobate substrate. The microrings can be detached from the benzocyclobutene layer using standard clean-1 solution and transferred onto any host substrate. This approach is suitable for building hybrid integrated optics devices with laterally and vertically coupled lithium niobate microring resonators. Gallium nitride was identified as a suitable material for the port waveguides in such a device due to the refractive index similar to lithium niobate. In our study, we transferred lithium niobate microrings on top of gallium nitride waveguides and aligned them for vertical coupling using a micropositioning tool. Transverse-electric-wave transmission spectra of the microring resonators with a radius of 20 mu m exhibited a free spectral range of 8.1 nm and a finesse of similar to 23 at 1.55-mu m wavelength. The resonance dips in these spectra showed an extinction ratio of up to 12 dB.