Low loss ridge-waveguide grating couplers in lithium niobate on insulator
Sipan Yang, Yaqian Li, Jinbin Xu, Min Wang, Liying Wu, Xueling Quan, Min Liu, Liucheng Fu, Xiulan Cheng
Abstract
The conventional ridge waveguides and grating-couplers in x-cut single-crystal lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI), have been designed, fabricated and characterized. All the device structures patterned on the sample were monolithically defined by one step of the electron-beam lithography process, followed by dry-etching. A low insertion loss (IL) of −6.3 dB/coupler for transverse-electric (TE) polarization inputs at the wavelength of 1543 nm was measured in the fabricated best device with the tapered structures, and exhibited a broad 3-dB optical bandwidth of more than 90 nm. This work may pave the way towards the future research of high-efficiency photonic waveguide components in thin-film LNOI.