Controlling thermo-optic response in microresonators using bimaterial cantilevers.

We demonstrate a novel platform to control the thermo-optic sensitivity in nanophotonic devices by evanescent coupling of light with bimaterial cantilevers. The cantilever can be designed to provide a negative thermal feedback to passively compensate for the positive thermo-optic effect in the waveguide core. We demonstrate athermal operation over 14 deg in cantilever coupled Silicon ring resonators, limited only by fabrication tolerances. We also show how the same platform can provide positive thermal feedback and overcome the material thermo-optic limit for increasing sensitivity of resonant detectors and thermal imagers.

Demonstration of strong near-field radiative heat transfer between integrated nanostructures.

Near-field heat transfer recently attracted growing interest but was demonstrated experimentally only in macroscopic systems. However, several projected applications would be relevant mostly in integrated nanostructures. Here we demonstrate a platform for near-field heat transfer on-chip and show that it can be the dominant thermal transport mechanism between integrated nanostructures, overcoming background substrate conduction and the far-field limit (by factors 8 and 7, respectively). Our approach could enable the development of active thermal control devices such as thermal rectifiers and transistors.

Athermal silicon microring resonators with titanium oxide cladding.

We describe a novel approach for CMOS-compatible passively temperature insensitive silicon based optical devices using titanium oxide cladding which has a negative thermo-optic (TO) effect. We engineer the mode confinement in Si and TiO2 such that positive TO of Si is exactly cancelled out by negative TO of TiO2. We demonstrate robust operation of the resulting device over 35 degrees.

High Q SiC microresonators.

We demonstrate photonic devices based on standard 3C SiC epitaxially grown on silicon. We achieve high optical confinement by taking advantage of the high stiffness of SiC and undercutting the underlying silicon substrate. We demonstrate a 20 µm radius suspended microring resonator with Q=14,100 fabricated on commercially available SiC-on-silicon substrates.

Near-field radiative cooling of nanostructures.

We measure near-field radiative cooling of a thermally isolated nanostructure up to a few degrees and show that in principle this process can efficiently cool down localized hotspots by tens of degrees at submicrometer gaps. This process of cooling is achieved without any physical contact, in contrast to heat transfer through conduction, thus enabling novel cooling capabilities. We show that the measured trend of radiative cooling agrees well theoretical predictions and is limited mainly by the geometry of the probe used here as well as the minimum separation that could be achieved in our setup. These results also pave the way for realizing other new effects based on resonant heat transfer, like thermal rectification and negative thermal conductance.

Athermal silicon microring electro-optic modulator.

We demonstrate a new class of passively temperature stabilized resonant silicon electro-optic modulators. The modulators consist of a ring resonator coupled to a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with tailored thermal properties. We demonstrate 2 GHz continuous modulation over a temperature range of 35 °C and describe the scalability and design rules for such a device.

Minimizing temperature sensitivity of silicon Mach-Zehnder interferometers.

We present a novel design approach for integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometers to minimize their temperature sensitivity and demonstrate, for the first time, near zero spectral shifts with temperature (approximately 0.005 nm/K) in these devices. This could lead to fully CMOS-compatible passively compensated athermal optical filters and modulators.

CMOS-compatible athermal silicon microring resonators.

We propose a new class of resonant silicon optical devices, consisting of a ring resonator coupled to a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which is passively temperature compensated by tailoring the optical mode confinement in the waveguides. We demonstrate operation of the device over a wide temperature range of 80 degrees. The fundamental principle behind this work can be extended to other photonic devices based on resonators such as modulators, routers, switches and filters.