Design of a polymer-filled silicon nitride strip/slot asymmetric hybrid waveguide for realizing both flat dispersion and athermal operation.

An asymmetric strip/slot hybrid silicon nitride waveguide is designed to simultaneously realize athermal operation and flat dispersion. The slot filling and upper cladding materials are negative thermal-optical coefficient (TOC), low refractive index polyurethane acrylate, while the left and right cladding layers are positive TOC, high refractive index silicon nitride. With suitable waveguide parameter selection, an optimum strip/slot hybrid silicon nitride waveguide exhibits an effective TOC of 1.263 x 10(-7)/K at 1550 nm, flattened dispersion in the wavelength range from 1200 to 1800 nm with the maximum dispersion of 30.51 ps/(nm.km), and a minimum of 10.89 ps/(nm.km). The proposed hybrid waveguide has great potential in building up broadband athermal microresonator optical frequency combs. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America