About the Flame hydrolysis deposition facility
Our flame hydrolysis deposition (FHD) tools form doped silica waveguide layers for integrated photonic circuits. FHD is the industrial process for producing planar lightwave circuits (PLCs). This includes the array waveguide gratings (AWGs) used in telecommunication networks.
We deposit optical fibre-grade glass on silicon wafers, from 1 to 100 micrometres (μm) in thickness.
Key facility features
- high purity and precise incorporation of germanium, phosphorus and boron into the glass layers. As with optical fibre fabrication we achieve this by using chloride precursors
- optimised for deposition of films with high photosensitivity. This allows direct ultra-violet (UV) laser writing of advanced photonics circuits
- growth of films ranging from 1 to 100μm in thickness
- designed to deposit onto 100 millimetre (mm) and 150mm silicon wafers, as well as other substrates
- high throughput of up to 30 wafers per day
Achievements
We have provided the optical platform for:
- optical boson sampling for quantum information processing
- optical circuits for telescope arrays
- biosensors for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear detection
- ultra-high Q-ring resonators
