RESEARCH ARTICLE

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High-Performance Electro-Optic Modulator on Silicon

Nitride Platform with Heterogeneous Integration of Lithium
Niobate
Ziliang Ruan, Kaixuan Chen, Zong Wang, Xuancong Fan, Ranfeng Gan, Lu Qi, Yiwei Xie,
Changjian Guo, Zhonghua Yang, Naidi Cui, and Liu Liu*

applications of, e.g., optical intercon-

Silicon nitride (SiN) emerges as an important platform for ultralow loss nects, lab-on-a-chip sensors, optical
photonic integrations with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor computing, and quantum informa-
compatibility. However, active devices, such as modulators, are difficult to tion processes.[1–4] Due to the high
realize on pure SiN due to the lack of any electro-optic (EO) properties of the refractive index of the crystalline sil-
icon, optical waveguides built on the
material. Here, an SiN and lithium niobate (LN) heterogenous integration silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer struc-
platform supporting high-performance EO modulators on SiN waveguide ture typically have cross-sectional sizes
circuits is introduced. An efficient evanescent coupling structure is realized of several hundred nanometers, which
for low-loss light transitions between the SiN waveguide and the LN ridge further leads to very compact photonic
waveguide with a measured mode transition loss of only 0.4 dB. Based on this integrated devices.[1] Besides passive
components, modulators,[5] relying on
heterogeneous platform, an EO Mach–Zender interference modulator on SiN
the free carrier dispersion effect in sil-
is built with unprecedented loss, efficiency, and bandwidth performances. A icon, and photodetectors,[6] using an
half-wave voltage of 4.3 V with a modulation bandwidth of 37 GHz and an epitaxially grown germanium film, have
overall insertion loss of 1 dB is measured for a 7-mm long device. Data also been realized on the SOI platform.
transmission up to 128 Gb s−1 with a bit-error-rate of <2.4 × 10-4 is also In addition, heterogeneous or hybrid
demonstrated. integration of III–V compound semi-
conductor materials enables laser and
amplifier integrations on silicon.[7,8]
1. Introduction Despite the above technology successes,
there are still some intrinsic drawbacks of crystalline silicon
During the last two decades, silicon photonics, utilizing a com- based photonic circuits, such as high temperature sensitivity,
plementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible fab- high coupling losses to a fiber, relatively high linear propaga-
rication process, has been developed into a successful plat- tion losses, two-photon absorption related nonlinear absorptions
form to support large-scale and low-cost photonic integration in at high optical power. On the other hand, the silicon nitride

Z. Ruan, Y. Xie, L. Liu K. Chen, X. Fan

State Key Laboratory for Modern Optical Instrumentation National Center for International Research on Green Optoelectronics
College of Optical Science and Engineering South China Normal University
International Research Center for Advanced Photonics Guangzhou 510006, China
Zhejiang University Z. Yang, N. Cui
Hangzhou 310058, China No. 20 Xiyuan South Street
E-mail: [email protected] Shapingba District
K. Chen, Z. Wang, X. Fan, R. Gan, L. Qi, C. Guo Chongqing United Microelectronics Center Co.
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Information Materials Ltd
and Technology Chongqing 401332, China
South China Academy of Advanced Optoelectronics L. Liu
Sci. Bldg. No. 5 Jiaxing Key Laboratory of Photonic Sensing & Intelligent Imaging
Higher-Education Mega-Center Intelligent Optics & Photonics Research Center
South China Normal University Jiaxing Research Institute Zhejiang University
Guangzhou 510006, China Jiaxing 314000, China

The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article

can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/lpor.202200327
DOI: 10.1002/lpor.202200327

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Figure 1. Three-dimensional sketch of the proposed SiN-LN heterogeneously integrated modulator.

Figure 2. Sketch of the evanescent coupling structure and its cross-sections at different positions.

(SiN) based photonic platform, which is also CMOS compati- A Pockels or two-dimensional material, such as lead zirconate
ble, has shown its potential for extremely low optical losses, high titanate (PZT),[15] transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD),[16]
power handling, good temperature stability, and extended work- and lithium niobate (LN), is idea for building EO modulator.
ing wavelength range to visible.[2,9–11] However, being a dielectric Among them, thin-film LN, or LN-on-insulator (LNOI) structure,
material, SiN does not show any usable electro-optical (EO) prop- has drawn great interests recently for its abilities to build com-
erties to support an optical modulator or a photodetector. The lack pact, low-loss, and large bandwidth EO modulators.[17–19] Het-
of these active components on native SiN hinders its further de- erogeneous integration of an LN thin-film on SOI photonic cir-
velopment to a complete photonic integration platform. Hetero- cuits has been demonstrated to build modulators that outper-
geneous integration is so far the only viable solution to this prob- form other modulator structures on the silicon platform.[20,21]
lem. Similar to the SOI platform, high-performance lasers and Here, due to the high refractive index of silicon, the light con-
photodetectors on SiN have been successfully realized with the finement in either silicon or LN materials can be easily tuned
help of bonded III–V compound semiconductor epi-layers.[12,13] by changing the width of the silicon wire, and a highly efficient
Silicon modulator integration with low-loss SiN waveguides evanescent coupling structure employing a single taper in SOI
has also been introduced using multilayer processing, al- can be built for light transition between the SOI waveguide to
though silicon itself is not an ideal material for constructing a an LN ridge waveguide[20] or a silicon-LN hybrid waveguide.[21]
modulator.[14] However, SiN has a similar refractive index to that of LN, which

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hinders to adopt the same coupling structure of a single taper in

SiN, since unwanted mode coupling may occur at the entrance
from the SiN to the LN waveguide. Compromises have to be made
by either thickening the SiN waveguide layer or thinning the LN
layer.[22–27] The former approach only applies to an SiN waveguide
of about 800-nm thickness, which is not widely adopted.[22,23]
The latter one would largely decrease the light confinement in
LN, and hence lower the modulation efficiency.[24–27] An alterna-
tive strategy, instead of integrating an LN thin-film on SiN cir-
cuits, is to deposit and pattern SiN structures on top of an LNOI
wafer.[28–33] This approach, however, introduces LN material in
the early stage of the whole wafer processing and diminishes the
advantage of CMOS compatibility for fabricating the SiN circuits.
In this paper, we introduce a strategy for integrating LN thin-
film based devices on the SiN circuits, which then leads to a high-
performance modulator on SiN. The SiN circuits with an SiN
layer thickness of 300 nm are fabricated in a standard CMOS
fab. Die-to-wafer bonding technology is used to realize the het-
erogenous integration of an LN thin-film of 500-nm thickness
on the fabricated SiN circuits. The nanoscale patterning technol-
ogy for the bonded LN thin-film is developed, which facilitates
to construct a highly efficient evanescent coupling structure us-
ing double tapers in both the SiN waveguide and the etched LN
waveguide. A travelling-wave based Mach–Zender interference
(MZI) modulator with a low insertion loss, a low drive voltage,
and a large bandwidth is therefore demonstrated by employing
this technology.

2. Device Structure
A sketch of the proposed SiN-LN heterogeneously integrated
MZI modulator structure is presented in Figure 1. Here, all
the passive structures, such as grating couplers for fiber ac-
cess, multimode interference (MMI) 3-dB couplers, and routing
waveguides, are designed on SiN. The straight phase modulation
section is built with partially etched LN ridge waveguides and
traveling-wave electrodes in a push–pull configuration. This type
of structure has been proved to give a high modulation efficiency
and a large modulation bandwidth.[17–20] The key part of the pro-
posed modulator here is the coupling structure between the SiN Figure 3. a) Light transmission at Interface I shown in Figure 2 with dif-
waveguide and the LN ridge waveguide, which is shown in Figure ferent LN slab thicknesses t. Insets show the mode field distributions at
2 in details. The SiN waveguide has a thickness of 300-nm and a t = 50 and 180 nm. Light transmission for b) Taper I with different taper
width of 2 μm. Light in it is first transferred to a hybrid structure length L1 and c) Taper II with different taper length L2 .
with an LN thin film bonded on top of the SiN waveguide (In-
terface I). In between, 400-nm SiO2 over-cladding layer and 100-
nm bonding layer made of benzocyclobutene (BCB) polymer are The parameters of the proposed coupling structure are then
present. This unpatterned LN thin film is technologically needed designed. The working wavelength considered here is 1550 nm.
when fabricating the LN structures discussed below. This will be First, the LN slab thickness t at Interface I in Figure 2 is opti-
further explained in the next section. Then a double-taper struc- mized. Unlike the case for silicon-LN heterogenous integration
ture (Taper I) is adopted to transfer the light from the SiN-LN where the bonded LN layer hardly affects the optical mode in a
waveguide fully to an LN ridge waveguide of 250-nm thickness. silicon wire waveguide,[20,21] the small difference in the refrac-
The second taper in LN (Taper II) is further used to couple the tive indices of SiN and LN here renders the design of this in-
light to another LN ridge waveguide of 500-nm thickness, which terface nontrivial. Considering a normal SiN layer thickness of
is also used in the modulation section. For protection, the LN 300 nm employed here, the mode transition losses at Interface I
structure discussed above is covered with an SU8 polymer layer. with different t are shown in Figure 3a. Clearly, the bonded LN
This comprehensive taper design ensures a smooth light tran- layer should be thin in order not to disturb the mode field in a
sition from the single SiN rib waveguide to the final LN ridge single SiN waveguide. To ensure a transition loss of less than
waveguide for phase modulation. 0.1 dB, t < 100 nm is required theoretically. In the present de-

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Figure 4. a) Cross-sectional structure, and b) optical and electrical field distributions at the modulation section. c) Characteristic impedance, d) mi-
crowave index, and e) microwave loss of the designed electrode. The red dashed line in (d) indicates the group index of the optical mode. f) Simulated
EO frequency response of the device.

Figure 5. Pictures of a fabricated modulator. a) Whole device, b) evanescent coupling structure, c) Taper II region, d) Taper I region, and e) electrode.

sign, t = 50 nm is nominally adopted to keep some fabrication ering a sidewall angle of 60° normally resulted from the current
tolerances. Apparently, such a thin LN slab would not support an LN etching technique. The transmission performances of the two
efficient light modulation even if the underlying SiN waveguide is taper regions are analyzed with different taper lengths as shown
tapered to a small width.[24–26] Therefore, in the Taper I and Taper in Figure 3b,c. Here, the losses of the abrupt interfaces at the tip
II regions here, light is then fully coupled from the SiN waveg- ends are also included. Practically, L1 = 90 μm and L2 = 40 μm
uide to the LN ridge waveguide of 500-nm thickness. Generally, are adopted, where the transmissions of the two tapers are both
the coupling structure consists of a bi-layer taper in LN and an larger than 99%, even with a 200-nm misalignment of different
inverse taper in SiN. The minimal widths for the SiN waveguide layers in the y axis. With the above optimized parameters, the
(W2 ) and the LN structures (W1 and W3 ), i.e., the widths of the overall loss of the coupling structure shown in Figure 2 is better
tip ends, are 200 and 100 nm, respectively, which are within the than 0.1 dB, theoretically.
resolution limit of state-of-the-art fabrication tools. Note that all As mentioned above, the half-etched 500-nm thick LN ridge
the widths for the LN structures are measured at the top consid- waveguide is also used in the modulation section, where a reg-

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ular travelling-wave electrode is employed. Figure 4a plots the

cross-sectional structure of the modulation section with detailed
parameters, and together with the simulated optical and electri-
cal field distributions shown in Figure 4b. The half-wave voltage
length product of the present design is V𝜋 L = 2.9 V cm, and the
metal-induced optical propagation loss is <0.01 dB cm−1 . The
electrode parameters here are designed so that the characteris-
tic impedance and the effective index of the microwave signal
are matched to 50 Ω and the optical mode group index, respec-
tively, as well as low microwave losses, in a wide frequency range
as shown in Figure 4c–e. The simulated EO S21 response for the
device with 7-mm long modulation section is shown in Figure 4f.
Theoretically, such a device supports an EO 3-dB bandwidth of
100 GHz and a half-wave voltage V𝜋 of 4.14 V.

3. Fabrication
The fabrication of the designed modulator started with the
CMOS processing of the SiN circuits, which includes plasma-
enhanced chemical vapor deposition of a 4-μm buried SiO2
layer on top of a silicon wafer and subsequent low-pressure
chemical vapor deposition of the 300-nm SiN core layer. The
SiN patterns were prepared using 248-nm deep ultraviolet
photolithography and plasma etching. The wafer was covered by
another SiO2 layer, and the surface of the wafer was planarized
using chemical-mechanical polishing, which left a 400-nm SiO2
over-cladding on the SiN waveguide. Then, the wafer was diced
into chips for post processing.
For the heterogenous integration, a piece of LNOI die
(NanoLN), consisting of 500-nm x-cut LN thin film and 2-μm
buried SiO2 layer on a silicon substrate, was first bonded on top
of the SiN chip with 100-nm thick BCB as the adhesive layer. The
LNOI die covered all the waveguide patterns on the SiN chip.
The silicon substrate and the buried SiO2 layer of the LNOI die
were removed using mechanical grinding and chemical etching.
The structures on LN were then patterned using electron beam
lithography (EBL) and Argon-plasma based dry etching. Two EBL
and etching steps were subsequently employed to fabricate the
bi-layer tapers shown in Figure 2. Due to redepositions on the
pattern sidewalls in the LN dry etching, a standard clean 1 (SC1)
process with NH4 OH, H2 O2 , and H2 O should be employed to
clean the as-etched sample.[34] Since this solution could attack the
bonding interface between the LN and BCB layers, a thin layer
of LN (t ≈ 50 nm) was left when defining the Taper I structure,
which helps to protect the tiny LN taper from lifting off the chip Figure 6. a) Measured insertion loss of the evanescent coupling structure.
b) Measured static transmission of the whole modulator at different driv-
during the SC1 process. Afterward, this LN layer was patterned
ing voltages, showing the insertion loss and static extinction ratio of the
using contact photo-lithography, and etched away in chip areas device. c) Normalized optical transmission with a voltage scan at 100 kHz
except the modulation sections. According to Figure 3a and the for measuring V𝜋 of the device.
discussions above, this thin LN layer would only introduce a neg-
ligible loss for the light transition between the SiN waveguides
the die-to-die bonding was employed here as an example, it can
with and without it on top. Subsequently, an SU8 layer of 800-nm
be readily scaled to a multi-die-to-wafer bonding procedure facil-
thickness was spun on the chip and then patterned using contact
itating full-wafer processing of the LN structures.[10,22]
photo-lithography. The SU8 structures covered only the desired
gaps between electrodes at the modulation sections and the LN
waveguides to isolate them from the electrode routing. Finally, 4. Characterization
metal electrodes made of gold were prepared using evaporation
and lift-off processes. No more SU8 over-cladding was prepared The designed and fabricated coupling structure between the SiN
on the electrodes to facilitate testing. Figure 5 shows some pic- waveguide and the LN ridge waveguide was first characterized us-
tures of a finished sample including the taper regions. Although ing a test structure consisting of 16 cascaded couplers. Figure 6a

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Figure 7. Extracted electrode parameters of the fabricated modulator. a) Characteristic impedance, b) microwave index, and c) microwave loss. d)
Measured EO and EE frequency S parameters of the device.

presents the deducted transmission spectrum of a single cou- substrate would result in additional absorption losses for the mi-
pling structure. One can see that its insertion loss reaches 0.4 dB crowave signal. The EO S21 parameter was further characterized
for the best cases. This confirms the effectiveness of the proposed as shown in Figure 7d. As a comparison, the electrical-electrical
coupling structure, which further leads to achieving a low overall (EE) S21 parameter is also plotted. The EO 3-dB modulation band-
loss for the whole modulator. As shown in Figure 6b, the overall width reaches 37 GHz, which is consistent with the EE 6.4-dB
insertion loss of the present heterogeneously integrated modula- bandwidth. This is also an indication that the bandwidth perfor-
tor is 1 dB with a static extinction ratio >30 dB. Apparently, the mance of the present device is still limited by the high microwave
insertion loss here nearly comes alone from the two evanescent losses other than the slightly unmatched indices.
coupling structures (0.8 dB), which, considering also the large To demonstrate the feasibility of the present modulator in real
extinction ratio, indicates a good quality of the etched LN ridge optical interconnect applications, practical data transmission ex-
waveguides in the modulation section. The propagation loss of periments were further conducted. Eye-diagrams of the transmit-
the heterogeneous LN waveguide 𝛼 is therefore deducted as about ted signals with 64 Gb s−1 on–off keying (OOK) and 80 Gb s−1
0.28 dB cm−1 (<0.2 dB for the 7-mm long modulation section), 4-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) are shown in Fig-
which is consistent with our previous result.[20] The half-wave ure 8a,b, respectively. Clear eye opening can be observed. Bit er-
voltage V𝜋 of the device is further tested using a triangular wave ror rates (BERs) at different received optical powers were also
scan at 100 kHz. The measured V𝜋 is 4.3 V (corresponding to recorded for 128 Gb s−1 PAM4 signal. The BER can drop below
V𝜋 L = 3.0 V cm) as shown in Figure 6c, which is also matched the KP-4 forward error correction threshold of 2.4 × 10-4 with no
the theoretical calculation mentioned in the previous section. error floor observed.
For high-speed characteristics of the device, the traveling-wave Table 1 summarizes the performances of some demonstrated
electrode performances were measured first, as shown in Figure MZI modulators based on heterogeneous integrations on SiN
7. They were extracted from the S-parameters of the electrode. circuits. Apparently, the present device outperforms other LN
One can see that the characteristic impedance is matched well to based devices in all aspects, including, mode transition loss of
50 Ω, while the microwave effective index is slightly less than the the coupling structure, overall insertion loss of the modulator,
group index of the optical mode. This can be attributed to the in- half-wave voltage, and bandwidth. In order to compare with de-
sufficient thickness of the over-cladding SU8 layer as discussed in vices using other materials, we here introduce a new figure V𝜋 L𝛼,
the previous section. The measured microwave loss is also larger i.e., half-wave-voltage-length-loss product, which meaningfully
than expected, probably due to the normal p-doped silicon sub- considers both the modulation efficiency and the waveguide
strate (resistivity of <100 Ω cm) adopted here. This conducting loss.[15] Due to the intrinsically low loss and relatively matured

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5. Conclusion
We have introduced a solution for the heterogeneous integration
of LN based devices on the SiN photonic platform. A compre-
hensive and efficient evanescent coupling structure, as well as
the related fabrication processes, has been demonstrated for ul-
tralow loss light coupling from the passive SiN waveguides to
the active LN ridge waveguides. About 0.4 dB mode transition
losses have been measured, which is the key to achieve high-
performance LN integrated devices on SiN circuits. As an ex-
ample, an EO modulator has then been demonstrated. Together
with the low propagation loss of the LN waveguide, the overall
insertion loss of a 7-mm long modulator reaches 1 dB. This fab-
ricated device exhibits a V𝜋 of 4.3 V, corresponding to a V𝜋 L of
3.0 V cm, and a measured EO bandwidth of 37 GHz. Data trans-
missions with PAM4 modulation format beyond 100 Gb s−1 have
also been successfully achieved. The modulation performances
of the proposed device can be further improved using a capac-
itively loaded travelling-wave electrode design, which has been
shown to support high-performance LN modulators on a sili-
con substrate with a bandwidth >100 GHz and a driving volt-
age <1 V.[18] The present heterogeneous integration strategy with
low losses could further support wafer-scale and front-end CMOS
compatible processes.[12,13] This helps complete the SiN platform
by efficiently bringing Pockels effect and second-order nonlin-
earity on it, and enable potential applications, e.g., integrated
gyroscope, photonic microwave synthesizer, and referenced fre-
quency comb.[35,36]

Acknowledgements
Z.R. and K.C. contributed equally to this work. This work was par-
tially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China
Figure 8. Eye-diagrams measured using the modulator for a) 64 Gb s−1 (NSFC) (62135012, 62105107, 61961146003), Leading Innovative and En-
OOK and b) 80 Gb s−1 PAM4 formats. c) BERs for 128 Gb s−1 PAM4 for- trepreneur Team Introduction Program of Zhejiang (2021R01001), Guang-
mats at different received optical powers. dong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2021A1515012215,
2021B1515120057), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities (2021QNA5001).
fabrication processes of the LN material, the present LN-on-SiN
based device is the first to push V𝜋 L𝛼 below 1 V dB. Together
with the low mode transition loss, the present heterogeneously
integration can be applied on applications where universal
Conflict of Interest
low-power consumption phase tuners on SiN are required. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Table 1. Performances of demonstrated MZI modulators heterogeneously integrated on SiN circuits.

Structure Mode transition Modulator V𝜋 L (V cm) V𝜋 [V] V𝜋 L𝛼 [V dB] 3-dB EO

loss [dB] insertion loss [dB] bandwidth [GHz]

LN straight waveguide[ 22 ] a) 0.9 – – – – –

LN MZI[ 25 ] 2.0 7.0 5.5 61 N.M. N.M.
LN MZI[ 26 ] 0.96 (sim.) 13.4 6.67 13.34 131b) 30.6
LN straight waveguide[ 27 ] a) 0.81 – – – – –
PZT MZI[ 15 ] N.M. N.M. 4.76 47.6 23.8c) 27
TMD–HfO2 –ITO MZI[ 16 ] N.M. 6.6 0.8 N.M. 105d) 0.3
LN MZI [this work] 0.4 1.0 3.0 4.3 0.84 37
a) b) c d)
Only passive waveguides; 9.84 dB insertion loss of a 0.5 cm long phase modulation section; )5 dB cm−1 propagation loss; 6.6 dB insertion loss of a 500 μm long
phase modulation section; N.M.: not mentioned.

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