Energy transfer phenomena and radiative processes in silicon nitride based materials for on-chip photonics applications

Rare-earth (RE) doping of silicon-based structures provides a valuable approach for light-emitting devices which could be monolithically integrated atop the widespread silicon electronics platform and enables inexpensive integration of on-chip optical components. However, the small excitable fraction of RE ions and the substantial free carrier losses in Si nanostructures severely limit the possibility to achieve net optical gain using traditional Er doped materials, such as Er doped Si-rich oxides (Er:SRO). On the other hand, a novel material platform based on RE-doped silicon nitride (RE:Six) materials has recently revealed unique advantages for on-chip light source. Based on a variety of light emission spectroscopic techniques and rate equation modeling, light emission and energy transfer phenomena were studied to quantitatively assess the benefits of the novel Er and Nd doped SiNx (Er: SiN x and Nd:SiNx) material platform compared to the standard Er:SRO. Efficient energy transfer and nanosecond-time dynamics from SiN x matrices to RE ions with two orders of magnitude larger coupling coefficient than Er:SRO were demonstrated for the first time. The origin of this energy transfer was shown to consist of non-resonant phonon-mediated coupling by temperature-dependent experiments. In addition, a tradeoff between excitation efficiency by energy transfer and emission efficiency, determined by excess Si concentration, was discovered and studied. Although carrier absorption and non-radiative recombination jeopardize the observation of optical gain, differential loss measurements under femtosecond pulsed excitation resulted in the bleaching of the Er ground state absorption by energy transfer in Er:SiN x materials, which bears great hope for the engineering of Si-based lasers. On the other hand, with a superior 4-level system, Nd:SiNx is promising to lase with a lower threshold. To make use of the better field confinement in SiNx due to its higher refractive index, RE:SiN x microdisk resonant structures were investigated. Finite element method simulations were performed to study the whispering gallery modes (WGM) in RE: SiNx microdisk. Finally, stimulated emission in Nd:SiN x was reported for the first time by lifetime measurements of WGM in microdisk resonators.In this dissertation work, the energy transfer and radiative processes in SiNx-based materials were studied and the potential for RE:SiNx on-chip optical amplifiers was demonstrated.