RF-sputtered Z-cut electro-optic barium titanate modulator on silicon photonic platform

Abstract

Epitaxial BaTiO3 integrated on Si or Si-on-insulator using off-axis radio frequency sputtering is a promising material platform for building electro-optic modulators based on the Pockels effect. Barium titanate thin films with c-axis orientation have been epitaxially integrated on silicon-on-insulator wafers. They exhibit excellent structural quality with Pockels coefficient (r33) > 130 pm/V and propagation loss <2 dB/cm. Our results show that off-axis sputtered BaTiO3 films yield electro-optic modulation similar to that of high-quality films grown by molecular beam epitaxy and that the material is suitable for implementation of low-power Mach–Zehnder interferometer electro-optic modulators integrated on silicon in a Z-cut configuration.