Mid-infrared silicon-on-insulator waveguides with single-mode propagation over an octave of frequency

Increasing the working optical bandwidth of a photonic circuit is important for many applications, in particular chemical sensing at mid-infrared wavelengths. This useful bandwidth is not only limited by the transparency range of waveguide materials, but also the range over which a waveguide is single or multimoded for predictable circuit behaviour. In this work, we show the first experimental demonstration of "endlessly single-mode" waveguiding in silicon photonics. Silicon-on-insulator waveguides were designed, fabricated and characterised at 1.95 mu m and 3.80 mu m. The waveguides were shown to support low-loss propagation (1.46 +/- 0.13 dB/cm loss at 1.95 mu m and 1.55 +/- 0.35 dB/cm at 3.80 mu m) and single-mode propagation was confirmed at 1.95 mu m, meaning that only the fundamental mode was present over the wavelength range 1.95 - 3.80 mu m. We also present the prospects for the use of these waveguides in sensing applications. Published by Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.