Silicon nitride electric-field poled microresonator modulator

Stoichiometric silicon nitride is a highly regarded platform for its favorable attributes, such as low propagation loss and compatibility with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology, making it a prominent choice for various linear and nonlinear applications on a chip. However, due to its amorphous structure, silicon nitride lacks second-order nonlinearity; hence, the platform misses the key functionality of linear electro-optical modulation for photonic integrated circuits. Several approaches have been explored to address this problem, including integration with electro-optic active materials, piezoelectric tuning, and utilization of the thermo-optic effect. In this work, we demonstrate electro-optical modulation in a silicon nitride microring resonator enabled by electric-field poling, eliminating the complexities associated with material integration and providing data modulation speeds up to 75 Mb/s, currently only limited by the electrode design. With an estimated inscribed electric field of 100 V/μm, we achieve an effective second-order susceptibility of 0.45 pm/V. In addition, we derive and confirm the value of the material’s third-order susceptibility, which is responsible for the emergence of second-order nonlinearity. These findings broaden the functionality of silicon nitride as a platform for electro-optic modulation.