Gamma radiation effects in amorphous silicon and silicon nitride photonic devices

Understanding radiation damage is of significant importance for devices operating in radiation-harsh environments. In this Letter, we present a systematic study on gamma radiation effects in amorphous silicon and silicon nitride guided wave devices. It is found that gamma radiation increases the wav...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Du, Qingyang, Huang, Yizhong, Ogbuu, Okechukwu, Zhang, Wei, Li, Junying, Singh, Vivek, Agarwal, Anuradha, Hu, Juejun
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Optical Society of America 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112646
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1424-356X
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0282-8309
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7233-3918
Description
Summary:Understanding radiation damage is of significant importance for devices operating in radiation-harsh environments. In this Letter, we present a systematic study on gamma radiation effects in amorphous silicon and silicon nitride guided wave devices. It is found that gamma radiation increases the waveguide modal effective indices by as much as 4×10⁻³ in amorphous silicon and 5×10⁻⁴ in silicon nitride at 10 Mrad dose. This Letter further reveals that surface oxidation and radiation-induced densification account for the observed index change.