Integrated silicon carbide photonics for color center-based quantum technology and classical applications

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a prominent wide bandgap semiconductor for power electronics applications, due to its high breakthrough field strength, high thermal conductivity and low capacity. In recent years SiC has also emerged as a very promising candidate for integrated (quantum) photonics. This is because this wide bandgap material has many strengths, including being a mature technology platform, CMOS and bio-compatible, non-toxic and has unique photonic properties, such as high second-order and third-order nonlinearities, a high refractive index, a low intrinsic optical loss material that can host versatile color centers. However, despite these good material properties, three substantial challenges have to be addressed: a) the fabrication of SiC-on-Insulator (SiCOI) stacks for light confinement; b) the development of device fabrication technology with SiCOI for integrated (quantum-) photonic circuits; c) Low loss and dispersion control as well as efficient coupling scheme for coupling light in and out of a chip by a dedicated (nano-)fabrication technology and material engineering.