Silicon CMOS compatible transition metal oxide technology for boosting highly integrated photonic devices with disruptive performance

The SITOGA project will address for the first time the integration of transition metal oxides (TMO) materials in silicon photonics and CMOS electronics. TMOs have unique electro-optical properties that will offer unprecedented and novel capabilities to the silicon platform. SITOGA will focus on two disruptive TMO materials, barium titanate (BaTiO3) and vanadium oxide (VO2), for developing advanced photonic integrated devices for a wide range of applications. First, breakthrough photonic devices will be fabricated using the TMOs. Due to its ultra-high linear electro-optical coefficient, BaTiO3 will be used to develop an electro-optical modulator with bandwidth above 40GHz and drive voltage below 2V. The electrically-triggered, ultra-large change in VO2 refractive index will be exploited to build an electro-optical switching component with power consumption below 10µW and footprint below 50 µm2.The integration of the TMOs and their photonic devices on silicon will be performed with CMOS compatible techniques. Innovative integration processes with silicon photonics circuits and CMOS electronics will be targeted. The whole technology chain will be validated by two functional demonstrators: a 40Gbit/s DPSK transceiver and an 8x8 switching matrix with 100Gbit/s throughput. Furthermore, to fully exploit the unique potential of SITOGA approach, we will also investigate novel electro-optical effects in integrated TMO devices (i.e. bistability) in a more exploratory part.SITOGA situates at the forefront of technological innovation, offering as well the capacity through its consortium members to translate innovation into commercial products. To ensure high commercial impact, a clear path towards exploitation of the developed TMO/Si technology has been defined and will be pursued in the project.