A strong electro-optically active lead-free ferroelectric integrated on silicon

Stefan Abel (), Thilo Stöferle, Chiara Marchiori, Christophe Rossel, Marta D. Rossell, Rolf Erni, Daniele Caimi, Marilyne Sousa, Alexei Chelnokov, Bert J. Offrein and Jean Fompeyrine
Additional contact information
Stefan Abel: IBM Research—Zurich
Thilo Stöferle: IBM Research—Zurich
Chiara Marchiori: IBM Research—Zurich
Christophe Rossel: IBM Research—Zurich
Marta D. Rossell: Electron Microscopy Center, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Rolf Erni: Electron Microscopy Center, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Daniele Caimi: IBM Research—Zurich
Marilyne Sousa: IBM Research—Zurich
Alexei Chelnokov: CEA, LETI, MINATEC, DOPT
Bert J. Offrein: IBM Research—Zurich
Jean Fompeyrine: IBM Research—Zurich

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract The development of silicon photonics could greatly benefit from the linear electro-optical properties, absent in bulk silicon, of ferroelectric oxides, as a novel way to seamlessly connect the electrical and optical domain. Of all oxides, barium titanate exhibits one of the largest linear electro-optical coefficients, which has however not yet been explored for thin films on silicon. Here we report on the electro-optical properties of thin barium titanate films epitaxially grown on silicon substrates. We extract a large effective Pockels coefficient of reff=148 pm V−1, which is five times larger than in the current standard material for electro-optical devices, lithium niobate. We also reveal the tensor nature of the electro-optical properties, as necessary for properly designing future devices, and furthermore unambiguously demonstrate the presence of ferroelectricity. The integration of electro-optical active films on silicon could pave the way towards power-efficient, ultra-compact integrated devices, such as modulators, tuning elements and bistable switches.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2695 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2695

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2695

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().