In the last years, the proprietary TriPleX™ waveguide technology of LioniX International has matured and has become one of the three main integrated optical platforms (next to InP and SOI). TriPleX™ structures are realized with CMOS compatible fabrication equipment and the materials used are based on chemical endproducts of LPCVD processes, resulting in very reproducible material properties, allowing design by geometry.
The basic concept of a TriPleX™ waveguide consists of a multilayer stack of stochiometric silicon nitride and silicon oxide. These materials have an opposite stress when deposited on a silicon wafer, in which nitride is tensile and oxide is compressive, and stacking them in a multilayer results in a macroscopically low stress layer stack.
LioniX’s bio-photonic sensor platform has unparalleled sensitivity and reproducibility. It finds use in bio sensing applications, such as drug discovery and development, companion diagnostics, therapeutic drug response monitoring and early diagnostics.
LioniX SiN-Photonics TriPleX 850 | |
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Highlights | The availability of low-cost light sources like the VCSEL as well as standard photo-detector at this wavelength, makes it a very interesting range to integrate bio-sensors. The TriPleXTM technology has the lowest propagation losses reported for silicon nitride waveguides (0.1 dB/cm down to 0.1 dB/m). |
Technology Characteristics | Within the bio-sensing MPW, several standard components are offered, including micro-ring resonator (MRR) and asymmetric Mach Zehnder (aMZI) structures that are used as refractive index or absorption sensors. Other waveguide building blocks like bends, couplers and splitters are available to connect the sensor (arrays). Waveguide tapers and grating couplers are available to connect fiber (arrays) to the device or to prepare the device for flip-chip of VCSELs and detectors. |
Application | The 850nm MPW is optimized for bio-sensing applications. Other applications are also addressed in this wavelength range: • Optical Coherence Tomography • Spectrometry • Metrology |
LioniX SiN-Photonics TriPleX 1550 | |
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Highlights | The TriPleXTM waveguide technology offered within the infrared MPW is designed for single polarization (TE) applications to operate at the telecom wavelength (1.55 µm).
These waveguides show a low propagation loss (< 0.5 dB/cm @ 1.55µm). |
Technology Characteristics | High contrast waveguides allow bend radii of 125 micron, which makes large scale integration (VLSI) on chip possible.
The coupling to and from a fiber from this high contrast waveguide is optimized by the addition of spot size converters, which expand the mode profile to the size of a standard telecom fiber, allowing low loss fiber chip coupling. |
Application | This technology is suitable for components for telecom/datacom in the infrared (1550nm) region. |
For the visible (400-700 nm) the MPW is offered through an EU H2020 funded pilot-line project called PIX4life. This project will mature a state of the art silicon nitride (SiN) photonics pilot line for life science applications in the visible range and pave the way to make it accessible as an enabler for product development by a broad range of industrial customers. See www.pix4life.eu for more information.
