Paper 14100-16
Paper 14100-16
Nanoimprinted electro-optic modulator with sol-gel barium titanate
14 April 2026 • 10:00 - 10:20 CEST | Boston/Salon 11 (Niveau/Level 1)
Abstract
We report the development of the first monolithic electro-optic modulator based on sol-gel barium titanate (BTO). The material is synthesized by chemical solution deposition and patterned using soft nanoimprint lithography (SNIL), enabling a scalable bottom-up fabrication compatible with silicon dioxide substrates. Optical mode confinement at 1550 nm is achieved thanks to the relatively high refractive index of sol-gel BTO (~1.85). We characterize the optical losses and electro-optic response (VπL) of the fabricated waveguides, demonstrating that reducing the final annealing temperature from 800 °C to 700 °C enhances the modulation efficiency by 1.5 times and reduces optical losses by 50%. These results highlight the tunability of the device performance as a function of sol-gel BTO properties and their potential for scalable integration in photonic circuits.
Presenter
Virginia Falcone
ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
I graduated in Physics Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2019, where I also obtained my PhD in Physics in 2023, defending a dissertation on a novel photodetector platform based on Ge and Si microcrystals for VIS–NIR detection. For the past two years, I have been a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich in the group of Prof. Rachel Grange. My current research focuses on nonlinear optical materials such as lithium niobate and barium titanate. In particular, I investigate their synthesis by chemical solution deposition and their patterning through soft nanoimprint lithography. This approach enables the fabrication of various photonic devices directly on silicon-based substrates, without requiring specific growth conditions or wafer bonding. My present work involves the development of integrated devices based on sol-gel barium titanate, exploiting its electro-optic properties to realize fully monolithic modulators on silicon dioxide-on-silicon substrates.