Wafer-Scale Fabrication of InGaP-on-Insulator for Nonlinear and Quantum Photonic Applications

Abstract

The development of manufacturable and scalable integrated nonlinear photonic materials is driving key technologies in diverse areas such as high-speed communications, signal processing, sensing, and quantum information. Here, we demonstrate a novel nonlinear platform -- InGaP-on-insulator -- optimized for visible-to-telecommunication wavelength $\chi^{\left(2\right)}$ nonlinear optical processes. In this work, we detail our 100-mm wafer-scale InGaP-on-insulator fabrication process realized via wafer bonding, optical lithography, and dry-etching techniques. The resulting wafers yield 1000s of components in each fabrication cycle, with initial designs that include chip-to-fiber couplers, 12.5-cm-long nested spiral waveguides, and arrays of microring resonators with free-spectral ranges spanning 400-900 GHz. We demonstrate intrinsic resonator quality factors as high as 324,000 (440,000) for single-resonance (split-resonance) modes near 1550 nm corresponding to 1.56 dB cm$^{-1}$ (1.22 dB cm$^{-1}$) propagation loss. We analyze the loss versus waveguide width and resonator radius to establish the operating regime for optimal 775-to-1550 nm phase matching. By combining the high $\chi^{\left(2\right)}$ and $\chi^{\left(3\right)}$ optical nonlinearity of InGaP with wafer-scale fabrication and low propagation loss, these results open promising possibilities for entangled-photon, multi-photon, and squeezed light generation.