Exploiting intrinsic material properties for improved integrated chalcogenide waveguide resonators for mid-IR sensing

Chalcogenide glass (ChG) materials have made in-roads into infrared photonic devices in both thin film and fiber form. Compact, on-chip, planar chalcogenide devices produced by CMOS-compatible processing techniques have been shown to exhibit comparable or superior performance to those of commercially available surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based systems when evaluated for device sensitivity, component footprint, and/or sensing response. Utilizing attributes of chalcogenide glasses often considered “material limitations” (including low glass transition, limited solvent-specific chemical durability and near-bandgap photosensitivity), we demonstrate enhancements to ChG device performance using thermal reflow, solution-based glass film deposition and near bandgap film illumination. Post-fabrication trimming based on the intrinsic photosensitivity of the chalcogenide glass are exploited to compensate for fabrication imperfections of ring resonators