Status and Potential of Lithium Niobate on Insulator (LNOI) for Photonic Integrated Circuits

Andreas Boes, Bill Corcoran, Lin Chang, John Bowers, Arnan Mitchell

Research output: Contribution to journalReview ArticleOtherpeer-review

604 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) technology is revolutionizing the lithium niobate industry, enabling higher performance, lower cost and entirely new devices and applications. The availability of LNOI wafers has sparked significant interest in the platform for integrated optical applications, as LNOI offers the attractive material properties of lithium niobate, while also offering the stronger optical confinement and a high optical element integration density that has driven the success of more mature silicon and silicon nitride (SiN) photonics platforms. Due to some similarities between LNOI and SiN, established techniques and standards can readily be adapted to the LNOI platform including a significant array of interface approaches, device designs and also heterogeneous integration techniques for laser sources and photodetectors. In this contribution, we review the latest developments in this platform, examine where further development is necessary to achieve more functionalities in LNOI integrated optical circuits and make a few suggestions of interesting applications that could be realized in this platform.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1700256
Number of pages19
JournalLaser & Photonics Reviews
Volume12
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2018

Keywords

  • integrated photonics
  • lithium niobate
  • nonlinear optics
  • optoelectronics
  • photonic integrated circuits

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