Nonlinear optics has not stopped evolving, offering opportunities to develop novel functionalities in photonics. Supercontinuum generation, a nonlinear optical phenomenon responsible for extreme spectral broadening, attracts the interest of researchers due to its high potential in many applications, including sensing, imaging, or optical communications. In particular, with the emergence of silicon photonics, integrated supercontinuum sources in silicon platforms have seen tremendous progress during the past decades. This article aims at giving an overview of supercontinuum generation in three main silicon-compatible photonics platforms, namely, silicon, silicon germanium, and silicon nitride, as well as the essential theoretical elements to understand this fascinating phenomenon.

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.

Nonlinear all-optical technology is an ultimate route for next-generation ultrafast signal processing of optical communication systems. New nonlinear functionalities need to be implemented in photonics, and complex oxides are considered as promising candidates due to their wide panel of attributes. In this context, yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) stands out, thanks to its ability to be epitaxially grown on silicon, adapting the lattice for the crystalline oxide family of materials. We report, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, a detailed theoretical and experimental study about the third-order nonlinear susceptibility in crystalline YSZ. Via self-phase modulation-induced broadening and considering the in-plane orientation of YSZ, we experimentally obtained an effective Kerr coefficient of n^2YSZ=4.0±2×10?19m2·W?1 in an 8% (mole fraction) YSZ waveguide. In agreement with the theoretically predicted n^2YSZ=1.3×10?19m2·W?1, the third-order nonlinear coefficient of YSZ is comparable with the one of silicon nitride, which is already being used in nonlinear optics. These promising results are a new step toward the implementation of functional oxides for nonlinear optical applications.

Near-infrared germanium (Ge) photodetectors monolithically integrated on top of silicon-on-insulator substrates are universally regarded as key enablers towards chip-scale nanophotonics, with applications ranging from sensing and health monitoring to object recognition and optical communications. In this work, we report on the high-data-rate performance pin waveguide photodetectors made of a lateral hetero-structured silicon-Ge-silicon (Si-Ge-Si) junction operating under low reverse bias at 1.55 μm. The pin photodetector integration scheme considerably eases device manufacturing and is fully compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. In particular, the hetero-structured Si-Ge-Si photodetectors show efficiency-bandwidth products of ～9 GHz at ?1 V and ～30 GHz at ?3 V, with a leakage dark current as low as ～150 nA, allowing superior signal detection of high-speed data traffic. A bit-error rate of 10?9 is achieved for conventional 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and 25 Gbps data rates, yielding optical power sensitivities of ?13.85 dBm, ?12.70 dBm, and ?11.25 dBm, respectively. This demonstration opens up new horizons towards cost-effective Ge pin waveguide photodetectors that combine fast device operation at low voltages with standard semiconductor fabrication processes, as desired for reliable on-chip architectures in next-generation nanophotonics integrated circuits.

In this paper, we report an experimental demonstration of enabling technology exploiting resonant properties of plasmonic nanoparticles, for the realization of wavelength-sensitive ultra-minituarized (4 μm×4 μm) optical metadevices. To this end, the example of a 1.3/1.6 μm wavelength demultiplexer is considered. Its technological implementation is based on the integration of gold cut-wire-based metalines on the top of a silicon-on-insulator waveguide. The plasmonic metalines modify locally the effective index of the Si waveguide and thus allow for the implementation of wavelength-dependent optical pathways. The 1.3/1.6 μm wavelength separation with extinction ratio between two demultiplexers’ channels reaching up to 20 dB is experimentally demonstrated. The considered approach, which can be readily adapted to different types of material planar lightwave circuit platforms and nanoresonators, is suited for the implementation of a generic family of wavelength-sensitive guided-wave optical metadevices.

In this paper, we report the experimental characterization of highly nonlinear GeSbS chalcogenide glass waveguides. We used a single-beam characterization protocol that accounts for the magnitude and sign of the real and imaginary parts of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility of integrated Ge23Sb7S70 (GeSbS) chalcogenide glass waveguides in the near-infrared wavelength range at λ=1580 nm. We measured a waveguide nonlinear parameter of 7.0±0.7 W 1·m 1, which corresponds to a nonlinear refractive index of n2=(0.93±0.08)×10 18 m2/W, comparable to that of silicon, but with an 80 times lower two-photon absorption coefficient βTPA=(0.010±0.003) cm/GW, accompanied with linear propagation losses as low as 0.5 dB/cm. The outstanding linear and nonlinear properties of GeSbS, with a measured nonlinear figure of merit FOMTPA=6.0±1.4 at λ=1580 nm, ultimately make it one of the most promising integrated platforms for the realization of nonlinear functionalities.