NANOPHOTONICS

AMO has already launched a nanophotonic prototyping foundry service based on various lithography techniques on 6’’ wafers including i-line projection lithography, electron beam lithography and advanced nanoimprint lithography. Currently active and passive integrated silicon nanophotonic devices like grating couplers, SOI electro-optical modulators, photonic crystals and microring resonators, etc. are commercially available.

Nanophotonics merges nanotechnology methods with photonics and thus enables light transmission, manipulation and detection on a nanometer scale. For over one decade AMO GmbH is active in the field of silicon photonics by employing state-of-the-art clean room technologies to develop active and passive integrated nanophotonics structures and devices. Moreover, high-speed integrated modulators for modern optical communication technologies were designed and fabricated and efficient fiber-chip coupling methods were established. Silicon photonics is supposed to be a suitable technology platform overcoming the current limits of optical interconnects in terms of size, power efficiency and speed. A second nanophotonic platform using silicon nitride as waveguide material has been recently developed opening the route to enter the visible wavelength range. Main fields of applications of AMO’s nanophotonics besides information technologies are bio photonics, life sciences, sensing, photonics for antenna technologies and integrated silicon based components for terahertz generation.