Integrated photonics is providing a platform for next generation computing – quantum computing and many applications beyond this exciting area. Silicon nitride is an ideal material for this purpose, due to its transparency in a wide spectral range and low intrinsic propagation loss.

To make a successful use case of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) three different areas of expertise are crucial: first, the theoretical knowledge of light propagation where confinement in the matter is studied through 3D FDTD simulations, second, the knowledge of materials involved and subtle techniques of micro fabrication to be utilized to actually build the cross section required and third, the optical characterization methods to be mastered to be able to confidently interpret the results.

In this paper, authors are investigating the properties of silicon nitride-based integrated components in the visible to near-infrared spectral range. They worked on the simulation, fabrication and characterization of waveguides, interferometers, waveguides crossings and micro-rings. The work covers the full learning cycle of how these components work in the integrated approach. Visible to near-infrared light is critical for quantum computing as many widely used photon sources work in this spectral range and the published knowledge about integrated components for these wavelengths is limited. The authors give a valuable summary of the state-of-the-art performances and compare their achievements.

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