Silicon nitride based plasmonic components for CMOS back-end-of-line integration

Silicon nitride waveguides provide low propagation loss but weak mode confinement due to the relatively small refractive index contrast between the Si₃N₄ core and the SiO2 cladding. On the other hand, metal-insulator-metal (MIM) plasmonic waveguides offer strong mode confinement but large propagation loss. In this work, MIM-like plasmonic waveguides and passive devices based on horizontal Cu-Si₃N₄-Cu or Cu-SiO₂-Si₃N₄-SiO₂-Cu structures are integrated in the conventional Si₃N₄ waveguide circuits using standard CMOS backend processes, and are characterized around 1550-nm telecom wavelengths using the conventional fiber-waveguide-fiber method. The Cu-Si₃N₄(~100 nm)-Cu devices exhibit ~0.78-dB/μm propagation loss for straight waveguides, ~38% coupling efficiency with the conventional 1-μm-wide Si₃N₄ waveguide through a 2-μm-long taper coupler, ~0.2-dB bending loss for sharp 90° bends, and ~0.1-dB excess loss for ultracompact 1 × 2 and 1 × 4 power splitters. Inserting a ~10-nm SiO₂ layer between the Si3N4 core and the Cu cover (i.e., the Cu-SiO2(~10 nm)-Si₃N₄(~100 nm)-SiO2(~10 nm)-Cu devices), the propagation loss and the coupling efficiency are improved to ~0.37 dB/μm and ~52% while the bending loss and the excess loss are degraded to ~3.2 dB and ~2.1 dB, respectively. These experimental results are roughly consistent with the numerical simulation results after taking the influence of possible imperfect fabrication into account. Ultracompact plasmonic ring resonators with 1-μm radius are demonstrated with an extinction ratio of ~18 dB and a quality factor of ~84, close to the theoretical prediction.