Flat electro-optical frequency combs play an important role in a wide range of applications, such as metrology, spectroscopy, or microwave photonics. As a key technology for the integration of optical circuits, silicon photonics could benefit from on-chip, tunable, flat frequency comb generators. In this article, two different architectures based on silicon modulators are studied for this purpose. They rely on a time to frequency conversion principle to shape the comb envelope. Using a numerical model of the silicon traveling-wave phase modulators, their driving schemes are optimized before their performances are simulated and compared. A total of nine lines could be obtained within a 2 dB flatness, with a line-spacing ranging from 0.1 to 7 GHz. Since this tunability is a major asset of electro-optical frequency combs, the effect of segmenting the phase modulators is finally investigated, showing that the flat lines spacing could be extended up to 39 GHz by this method.

We report supercontinuum generation in nitrogen-rich (N-rich) silicon nitride waveguides fabricated through back-end complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible processes on a 300 mm platform. By pumping in the anomalous dispersion regime at a wavelength of 1200 nm, two-octave spanning spectra covering the visible and near-infrared ranges, including the O band, were obtained. Numerical calculations showed that the nonlinear index of N-rich silicon nitride is within the same order of magnitude as that of stoichiometric silicon nitride, despite the lower silicon content. N-rich silicon nitride then appears to be a promising candidate for nonlinear devices compatible with back-end CMOS processes.